The recent KiwiNet grouphug in Wellington showed the value of having a dealmaker come salesman attitude when it comes tocommercialisation.
KiwiNet is the collective commercialisation arms of eight CRIs and universities – combiningknowhow and networks and providing an outward facing view for much of our tertiary smarts andideas.
The May 2 forum was an opportunity to up the networks, and provide practical knowhow.
In this regard, Anthony Francis managing director of South Australia’s
But it was soon clear that the ex-accountant (who got out before he was bored to death), and hasbeen involved in some private ideas to market ventures, is the ideal dealmaker in thiscommercialisation space. There’s a suspicion that this Aussie is more in the ‘ask forforgiveness rather than permission’ camp.
If there was one Francis take-homemessage, it was NOT to get too tied up about where/who has the intellectual property.
FP’s general policy is to vest the IP in the separate company that is set up. Often this wassomeone else with money and/or passion, and willing to drive the idea. Basically, they’re told toget on with it.
Francis isn’t than enamoured of the idea of licensing IP either – “it sets up anadversarial mindset right from the start”.
He gave one example of some IP ‘freed’ (sticK’s description) from Flinders – where largecollections of data in the form of icons or images are displayed in a 3-D array organised about axesof relevance.
As described on
thereitis.com’
s website:
“Scanning large collections of visual data, users are able to detect clusters of thetype of objects they are looking for – often in their peripheral vision. They then focus on thegeneral area to further refine their visual search until frequently they announce ‘there it is!’Our studies to-date show a significant reduction in search and find times”
It is a perfect illustration of what Francis described as “it is good to be where the problemsare.” From that you can figure:
‘Entrepreneurship is the processof creating or seizing an opportunity and pursuing it regardless of the resources currentlycontrolled.’ ( Jeffrey Timons )"A good idea is a bad idea that learns”
‘The competitor to be feared is one who never bothers about you at all, but goes on making hisown business better all the time.’ ( Henry Ford )
Another of FP’s relationships is with the Aussie Rules team the
For Flinders, having Francis in the driving seat doing some of the deals has been a savvy move– do the deal, don’t get too worked up about the IP (let it go free!)