Isis Innovation

Isis Innovation was built on the foundation "Isis helps researchers who want help to commercialise the results of their research" (Isis Innovation was renamed Oxford University Innovation in 2016). This approach was in place well before I started working there in 2000; I came to see it as the touchstone for the organisation, and central to a succes... sful university technology transfer programme. It was all about helping researchers do something they wanted to do; they chose, there was no compulsion for researchers to become involved; and crucially they got to decide the definition of 'help', not us. We didn't spend much time thinking about the reasons behind why the researchers got in touch with us. We had come to accept it was a combination of motivations: seeing their results put into practice, a sense of obligation, make some money, move with the times, keep up with the neighbours etc. In November 2016 I visited a number of UK universities, all in the Russell Group, and all active in technology commercialisation. My visits included the University of Cambridge, a world famous university in the east of England, and its technology transfer company Cambridge Enterprise Ltd. It is a thinking kind of place and I heard from the CEO, Dr Tony Raven, about how they have identified three categories of researchers, grouped in terms of the researchers' motivations to engage with Cambridge Enterprise and the technology commercialisation process. The three categories for the motivations of researchers, in my own words, as I recall them being described, are: Motivations 1. The researcher feels an obligation to contact the TTO (Technology Transfer Office) in order to win research funding to pursue their fundamental interest i.e. the research itself. 2. The researcher wants the research outputs to have an impact in society, beyond academia and academic publications, but without themselves becoming too involved. For example, clinicians who do not actually want to be involved in commercialisation themselves, but want to support ...Read More