Many pathways to commercialisation

PROVIDING a big pool of in-house pre-seed funding is not the only path to commercialisation, according to The University of Western Australia Office of Industry and Innovation director, Andy Sierakowski.

Instead, Dr Sierakowski believes providing small amounts of funding to further develop research will get projects to a stage where they become attractive to venture capitalists.

“What we are saying is that there is no shortage of money but it’s a matter of getting the projects in a form where they can be appreciated,” Dr Sierakowski said.

UWA’s Pathfinder fund, established in 2002, provides $250,000 annually (until the end of 2005) to fund small projects up to $40,000.

However, Curtin University is gearing up to launch a $5 million internal pre-seed fund that could invest up to $250,000 a project.

Curtin University pro vice-chancellor research and development, Barney Glover, said he hoped the fund would be introduced next year.

“We hope to put a proposal to council during 2005 and look to 2006 to introduce the fund,” Professor Glover said.

“The funding would come from the university’s investment reserves, which are limited, and we would be building to the $5 million figure with the likelihood that future returns will replace the investment funding source as we have successes.

“We would like to have one or more co-investors to join with us along the lines of the Westscheme involvement at Murdoch. The clear benefit to the university is similar to Uniseed {University of Queensland} in that we have an opportunity to develop our IP to a more mature stage without sacrificing equity and hence maintaining greater potential value from future returns.

“There is still a need for a true pre-seed fund in Australia and this type of arrangement would at least partially address that need for Curtin.”

But while universities develop different funding models they agree that boosting staff levels within their research and development offices will help increase the deal flow.

Dr Sierakowski said it was important to locate the research.

While there are no plans to replicated The University of Queensland’s model of having a manager of commercialisation in every faculty, Dr Sierakowski said close links with business develop-ment managers at the faculties would deliver good results.

He said there wasn’t enough deal flow to sustain employment of commercialisation managers at the various faculties.

UWA, which launched its Office of Industry and Innovation in 2001, has recently increased its staff numbers to five.

And at Curtin University, Conrad Crisafulli has been appointed as the first commercialisation manager.

Murdoch University has six full-time employees devoted to commer-cialisation. Murdoch University director of research and develop-ment, Paul D’Sylva, said he expected to have 10 people working on commercialisation by the end of 2006.

Murdoch University also has the biggest funding pool to develop early stage research through its Murdoch Westscheme Enterprise Partnership, launched in January last year.

Westscheme Ventures will contribute $10 million in funding to the MWEP over 10 years and pay Murdoch an operating budget of $2.5 million to manage the fund.

Dr Sierakowski said the deal flow would improve as commercialisation offices in WA matured.

“Some people look at us and say we are doing well but we’ve been going for three years now, so we are getting some momentum,” he said.

“You have to spend time and it has to be a staged approach. You can’t just employ 10 people or they’ll be sitting around twiddling their thumbs.”