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As the technical expert, you are essential to the development and ability for the innovation to reach the market, as is a strong and diverse team of complementary expertise and experience to support you along the way. Depending on your aspirations, there are a number of different ways, and varying degrees, to which you can engage in the later stages of the commercialisation journey.

These different routes to market, or commercialisation pathways, have been outlined below.

Commercialisation pathways

There are three main commercialisation pathways:

• spinout
• social enterprise formation
• licensing.

Spin outs and social enterprises

Sometimes, the most viable way to develop research outputs into a product or service to reach the market is through creation of a new company or vehicle – a spinout. A spinout company is a company formed to commercialise University owned research outputs (intellectual property).

Another type of new company, formed to commercialise research outputs or ideas/innovations arising from within the University, is a social enterprise. A social enterprise is a company which has a strong social mission, where a proportion of profits are typically re-invested into research and development or to subsidise a particular product so that it can be accessed and used by those who cannot necessarily afford to pay for that product.

Licensing

Licensing is where permission is given to an external partner to commercialise (develop and/or incorporate into their existing product/service offerings and sell to customers) the underlying valuable research outputs which make up the innovation/idea. In return for this permission, we will typically receive a revenue stream back to the University, which you, the creator, may benefit from too (see the IP Code of Practice for revenue generation splits). Often, an external partner may be interested in the innovation/idea, but need further information before they can make their decision – research and development is an essential, but risky investment for any business.

Timelines to spinout, social enterprise or licensing

It’s important to understand that for some ideas and/or innovations which arise from research outputs, the time duration can be decades between generating those initial data which provide the first lab-based evidence that this might work, to the final product or service being placed on the market for use.

Conversely, the development pathway can be quite short – perhaps even just a year! The speed of development is impacted by many factors, not just technological development/maturation of the offering, but aspects sometimes outside of our control, such as changing customer or market needs, policy or other standard or regulatory changes, and importantly access to funding along the way.