Linked Innovation

Why do research centers so often fail to commercialize discoveries? This chapter introduces the core challenge faced by research center managing directors: how to achieve economic sustainability while preserving academic quality. It is a challenging environment, with governments looking to cut costs on R & D, companies not recovering precrisis R & D budgets, investors unwilling to take on such long-term bids, and research centers closing due to the scarcity of resources. It is a paradox that is drawing the attention of leaders in research centers at the university, industry, and government level. It is a growing conversation among academics trying to address the question.

Promising to drive economic sustainability in research centers while preserving research quality, linked innovation is framed in this chapter as the connected process between research and commercialization, a route in which the investigation done is transformed into economic value to make the process sustainable. It is a track that interconnects two aspects: the pull of market needs and the push of knowledge. Perceived demand will be met only if the appropriate knowledge is available, and innovation will happen only if there is a market for it. Eight symptoms are then described for identifying the gaps in the innovation process, called broken innovation, through the examination of four challenges: performance metrics, market understanding, industry collaborations, and innovation ecosystems.

This chapter identifies the four causes behind the failure to select the appropriate research initiatives in early stages of the innovation process: choosing nonholistic performance metrics to decide among projects, a lack of knowledge sharing among agents of the research center, and a lack of either academic or business experience in senior roles. Then, the author examines four practical tools that leading institutions are implementing to solve those problems at research centers: prioritizing projects based on a collection of academic, economic, and social impact metrics; mapping each researcher’s focus of study through a research map and incentivizing collaborations and sharing the best practices among them; using professional recruitment for academic and executive directors; and attracting an international advisory board.

This Chapter detects the four causes behind the failure to translate discoveries into inventions: ignorance regarding market need; researchers’ lack of business knowledge and engagement with the industry; a scarcity of academic or executive profiles within a research team; and uncoachable researchers. Five hands-on mechanisms being applied to tackle those difficulties at prominent research centers are then presented: translating and mapping consumer needs through design thinking; following lean research principles by maximizing learning speed and minimizing testing costs; complementing the current services of the technology transfer office; creating diversified teams of academics (with Ph.Ds.) and executives (with MBAs); and measuring—in the recruitment, evaluation, and incentive scheme of academics—the ability to be mentored.

With regard to the failure to achieve industry collaborations, this chapter uncovers seven causes: an unclear business model; a center’s lack of brand; a lack of experience in the research team; an unclear value proposition; a disproportionate research team size; a center’s internal bureaucracy or politics; and the unacceptance of research results by external stakeholders. Later, 12 business models being applied at high-performing research centers are presented, including technology transfer through public funding, transfer pricing, marketing collaborations, freemium, licensing, spin-offs, search models, and consultancy joint ventures. Finally, 10 practical mechanisms are provided for optimizing university-industry-government models and facing the aforementioned barriers: designing a collaborative business model that fits the center’s orientation and age; reviewing the processes of your communication unit, ensuring a map of roles, processes in cascade and a CRM of specialized media; and doing periodic industry lectures to translate research results into impact; and more.

This chapter pinpoints the five causes behind not leveraging appropriately a research center’s innovation ecosystem. These are a lack of understanding of the innovation ecosystem, internal gaps, no external proximity, a lack of internal resources or hooks to keep talent, and few interactions among the ecosystem’s agents. Nine practical mechanisms being applied by recognized centers to confront these issues are then presented: qualifying the stakeholders of your innovation ecosystem; connecting with your internal decision makers, influencers and advisors; adapting your commercialization model to the characteristics of your ecosystem; connecting virtually with disperse agents; crowdsourcing the areas of your value chain that are not in the core business; capitalizing on aging; moving from academics to entrepreneurial academics; and recognizing academic entrepreneurs before they leave.

Finally, synthesizing the symptoms and causes of broken innovation, this chapter covers the four movements needed to advance from broken to linked innovation to become an economically sustainable research center while preserving research quality. First, choosing performance metrics for selecting research initiatives, changing your mindset from highlighting only academic or economic metrics to picking holistic metrics with academic, economic, and social impact. Second, understanding market needs, from following desires to applying design thinking. Third, collaborating with industry, moving from relationships for simply gathering data or selling research to collaborative business models with industry, universities, and government. And fourth, leveraging the center’s innovation ecosystem, shifting from agent-proximity to agent-meritocracy prioritization.

This appendix gathers additional information, on the research project, such as the applied research methodology or the summary of the explained best practices illustrated with case examples, to mention a few.