The Commercialisation of Science and Technology Science and

The Commercialisation of Science and Technology
    Good morning, everyone. I’d like to welcome you all to our series of lectures on "Excellence in Science"—and I must say, judging by the numbers of you in the audience out there, this is the most popular lecture we have had all year! So rather than take up any more of your time, I’d like to introduce my own topic "The Commercialisation of Science and Technology". Science and technology and the role of commercialisation in that area are very interesting questions. And it’s an issue which is going to be increasingly important, world wide. Let me just begin by giving you an overview of the relationship between science and technology and research development and innovation. These are terms which people use as if they mean the same thing. Essentially, science is that which is done to generate new basic knowledge, knowledge in areas where nobody has previously researched. Generally, that’s done in the universities and the government-funded research centers, of one sort ’or another. The larger international companies also do some of that, their own research I mean. Technology is really to do with the application of science.
    It turns scientific discoveries into a useful product, or a useful service. If I may compare scientific and technology, I could say that science provides the fundamental knowledge that explains a phenomenon, whereas technology takes that understanding and transforms it into a useful thing. It’s very much like a pendulum and a click. The pendulum is the part of a clock whose movement, back and forth, makes a clock work. The click is the useful product that has a function of telling the time. Therefore, science can be compared to that swinging motion within the clock and technology is the total object the clock. That’s the sort of difference you’re looking at.
    Research, development and innovation are aligned, in that research is closely related to basic sciences. Development is the process of taking the basic scientific idea or item. and running it through to the development of products and services. Innovation is really about putting that product and service into the market place. So innovation is about the creation of a new of ideas and products and a new set of ways of delivering them.
    Now in terms of commercialisation of technology, the most important thing nowadays is the difficulty that countries have with funding. That is, getting enough money with which to develop scientific ideas into useful products and services. It’s very expensive. For every dollar you spend on basic research, it costs a company $10 in development and another $10 in marketing. Many companies today just cannot afford that.
    The other thing of course, is for every profitable research idea, there’s an average of nine ideas that come to nothing. So, only one out often is taken to the final production stage, I’ll stop here to answer a question asked by some people who would like to know what happens to all of those so-called "unsuccessful" ideas.
    Yes it’s a continuing problem. Most of them are, of course, lost forever. An idea may eventually reach the production stage through the persistent efforts of interested individuals but this requires a great deal of time and finance on the part of the inventor, or owner of the idea. Most people, however, just don’t have enough resources to invest in a product that cannot guarantee a profitable return on their investment. No more questions? OK. Now, returning to my last point about companies and research ideas. Many ideas look wonderful on paper but they are often impossible to utilize in an inexpensive enough manner, or, having done so, the product doesn’t really work, or it’s unacceptable for various reasons. So before too long, the technology becomes outmoded, it becomes old technology like record players. For example, you don’t see companies today investing money in, record players, do you? Why bother? I imagine that in the not too distant future, young people won’t even know what a record is. At present, there seems to be a movement in the commercialisation of research and development towards the need for companies, large and small, to subcontract. That is, companies pay other specialized individuals or organisations to do research on their behalf. It’s becoming the practical solution. It’s only the very large companies who still retain their own research and development units. So occasionally, there’s a situation where a company has to commercialise but can’t do it alone. It has to get help. Sometimes, this may come from smaller companies, or, what’s happening more often these days, companies turn to universities and ask them for assistance with the development of new technologies. You find that’s a world wide movement. It happens in Europe, the United States, Asia, Austria, wherever. It’s important that governments understand the need to continuously research and develop, and governments should be aware of this need for domestic companies to work closely with firms overseas. The reality is on an international scale, if a company wants to be part of an international movement, governments need to encourage and facilitate the interaction of the domestic firm with its overseas counterparts. This doesn’t always happen because of the huge costs involved in doing so.
    However, it’s an exciting period, a very, very exciting period for science and technology. Now, returning to my point about the need for further research and development it seems to me that today...