Abstract:

Industry-Academia collaboration are often initiated solely to further a research or to meet a funding requirement, but it still remains a definitive means that improves the research-commercialization prospects.

The support mechanisms for Industry-Academia collaboration include national and international funding instruments, technology transfer offices (TTOs) and technology management offices (TMOs). However, despite a notable surge in the use of almost all of these mechanisms, yet the number of eligible projects successfully receiving support towards commercialization remain very limited. This results in even fewer research projects that successfully commercialize.

This research qualitatively explores the various contextual factors that impact on research projects in their path to commercialization, particularly from the industry-academia collaborative perspective (since most of the funded research projects require industry engagement).
The research assessed the commercialization readiness and contextual factors impacting on seven EU-funded-research-projects as case studies in their course for commercialization. Based on the findings, a roadmap is proposed for the commercialization of funded-research projects. The roadmap was further validated by expert industrial opinions.

Several research findings emerged including the definitive need for a clear legal framework that delineates the financial revenue and cost sharing aspects of commercialization amongst the researcher, the TTO, the institute, and the industrial partner. The research also identified a lack of confidence in the success of the commercialization activities partly related to a confidence gap between industry and academia. Also emerged a need for expanding the engagement of TTOs of research institutes during post-funding commercialization stages.

Keywords:

Commercialization, Industry-Academia collaboration, Roadmap.