Identifying barriers to commercialisation of intellectual property at selected South African universities

Abstract

Commercialisation of intellectual property, also known as technology transfer, is the process of transferring scientific research findings from university to market for the purpose of further development, economic growth and social impact. Standing at the frontier of knowledge, universities can create valuable commercial innovations. The World Economic Forum emphasised the vital role universities play in growing efficiency and human capacity, resulting in global competitiveness. Consequently, university technology transfer and commercialisation have become a matter of substantial public interest. Acknowledging the importance of university technology transfer, South Africa has emphasised the need for cultivating and increasing innovation outputs through efforts to transform the country into a knowledge-economy. Government implemented several initiatives resonating South Africa’s innovation intent. The implementation of the Intellectual Property Rights from Publicly Financed Research Act (51 of 2008) and establishment of technology transfer offices across universities in South Africa serves as a practical example of efforts undertaken by government. While South Africa has made progress in efforts to transform into a knowledge economy, a number of challenges remain in terms of its innovation capacity, with specific reference to commercialisation activity of Intellectual Property (IP) at university level. Research have indicated that low commercialisation activity can be ascribed to commercialisation barriers experienced by universities. These barriers prevent university-based innovation from progressing into the marketplace for the benefit of the economy, universities, and society. The research objective of this study was therefore to identify and determine the commercialisation barriers experienced by South African universities. This included the prioritisation of the barriers and exploration of possible solutions (that may assist government and university policy makers in their efforts) to improve innovation capacity. The mixed methods approach was used to achieve the abovementioned objectives, through employing a questionnaire and semi-structured interviews as measuring instruments. The validity and reliability were confirmed through utilising the factor analysis and Cronbach alpha methods. Additional statistical analysis included ANOVA to determine the variance across the factors measured and regression to estimate the casual relationship among variables. The ANOVA results concluded that all the groups perceive and rated barriers differently; this was further confirmed by one of the interview respondents, mentioning commercialisation differs across environments. The regression performed showed that most of the factors identified from the factor analysis were interrelated. The factor analysis grouped the questions from the questionnaire into factor groups. By ranking these factor groups according to their mean values, the largest barriers could be identified. The highest measured barriers (factors) are: university red tape (factor11), funding barriers (factor 4), entrepreneurial orientation (factor 6) and University- Industry (U-I) disconnect (factor 1). Followed by the questionnaire, interviews were conducted with five experts. These experts have an average of 26 years’ experience in commercialisation amongst them. All the interviewees indicated that commercialisation barriers are part of a larger underlying problem within the value chain/system. The barriers highlighted by most of the interviewees were: U-I disconnect (irrelevant research), lack of entrepreneurial spirit, red tape at universities and lack of Venture Capital (VC) funding. Comparing the results of the questionnaire and interviews together with the literature findings, some interesting similarities emerged. There was a clear pattern amongst the highest rated/most relevant barriers from the questionnaire, interviews and literature. The barriers extracted and ranked were U-I collaboration, university red tape, entrepreneurial spirit and VC funding. As motivational speaker Hilary Hinton stated, “The first step in solving a problem is recognising there is one”. Therefore, the above barriers provide the ideal starting point to solve challenges pertaining to IP commercialisation at selected universities in South Africa. Barriers are perceived differently amongst Technology Transfer Offices (TTOs), researchers and industry, consequently all role-players need to be actively involved in identifying common commercialisation solutions and solve identified barriers through a joint effort