Commercialization Workshop

For the latter half of last week I was on the Sunshine Coast, about 100 km outside of Brisbane, for a research commercialization workshop. The universities here in Australia, as well as a respectable number of venture capitalist entities, view research students as potential idea factories, and are eager to partner with the students to capitalize on those ideas. The partnership can provide everything the student needs to bring ideas to full fruition, although the effort still requires a great deal of work, patience, and time. Funding may start with a seed for further research to solidify results, and end up in a world-changing start-up company.

The focus of the workshop was to educate the students about the commercialization process. It doesn't always involve a patentable product or lead to the next big start-up company. An avenue that hadn't really occurred to me was the idea of being a consultant -- using research expertise to help guide a company assessing cutting edge ideas. The students represented were not all scientists, either. There were students from art, information technology, and psychology departments there, as well. In all, 170 students attended this year.

Essentially, the theme of the workshop was to expand the entrepreneurial mindset of the students, to show them how to make the most out of a PhD in the career world. While partnering with a venture capitol firm does mean the student doesn't get 100% of the money from the developed idea -- the idea might never make it out to the world otherwise. One thing I have to say about the investors here, is they seem to have a much fairer approach to sharing the wealth, so the students would still stand to make a great deal of money if the idea is big enough.

I came away from the workshop with a much better understanding of what is involved in taking an idea to a finished product; a wider network of contacts to help me in this process; and a great deal of confidence that getting the PhD won't limit my career in the least.