Stimulating scientific entrepeneurship

In the Creiman project, B&W joined forces with a set of research organizations in a pilot project to better structure the support for scientific entrepreneurship. The starting point was what is a main concern for public research centres: How to increase the exploitation of their R&D results, thus shifting the focus from patents or publications to more impact-related indicators such as licensing agreements or ventures created? Then, since the resources did not allow for offering support to all their scientists, what should be the focus? What type of support to offer?

On the other hand, researchers at public centers are used to the freedom of defining their work provided that the required financing is secured. Once interesting results are obtained, their usual challenge is finding the potential applications and elaborating on how to develop them, without being (mis)guided by short-term financial needs or corporate interests.

Entrepreneurs coached to exploit their results

The ICMAB, part of CSIC, the largest public research institution in Spain, decided to tackle these issues together with B&W and FEC B&W defined a support programme to coach scientific entrepreneurs in assessing the potential for exploiting their results and exploring possible exploitation paths. To ensure that the scarce resources were focussed on those with higher potential, B&W implemented its funnel approach and defined a stage-gate selection process. Complementary, FEC offered training courses covering different entrepreneurship topics and CSIC offered Technology Transfer support services.

From pilot project to formal support programmes

B&W interviewed 10 groups of researchers and analysed the basic elements of their proposed business opportunity (described in structured templates). These included aspects such as the maturity and uniqueness of the results, the potential markets and business models or IPR. Based on this preliminary analysis, B&W together with ICMAB, selected the 3 most promising research groups and supported them to develop their business opportunities.

As a result of this pilot project, one venture was created and CSIC had a valuable first-hand experience about how to support its scientific entrepreneurs. Based on that, CSIC is now defining formal support programmes and structures, thus making a big step towards further exploitation of its R&D investments in public institutions

Creiman
The Materials Science Institute of Barcelona
The Spanish National Research Council
Fundació Empresa i Ciencia at the Autonomous University of Barcelona