It's a challenge that universities around the world grapple with, namely creating and maintainingthe best structure to develop good bits of their intellectual property into saleable products.
Universities, at least in New Zealand, are never terribly flush with money, and turning an ideainto income takes capital up front and varying lengths of time, to maybe, realise a return.
It's no different in Wellington, and changes are afoot at
The university's going through discussions with Viclink staff, looking at ways to be moreefficient says VUW vice chancellor Neil Quigley. Some of the changes will involve staff losses,though Quigley is at pains to point out that the university is keeping its commercialisationarm.
"Over the past few years Viclink's built up a variety of back office support functions such asmarketing, I.T. and other things," Quigley says. "It's clear that's not the efficient way to doit."
A reintegration of the back office to the university will probably take place (final decision isstill to be made), and "the intent is to ensure we still get as much money into actualcommercialisation per se," he says.
The changes may include a scaling back of a chief executive role to a managing director type fora couple of days a week for the wholly owned subsidiary which operates as a separate company. Thoughit is not a hugely high risk enterprise, Quigley says it makes sense to keep Viclink as a separateentity for accounting and other reasons.
VUW's challenge is reflected around the world by universities. Some varsities keep allcommercialisation in-house, through to others shopping it all out to a contracting third party whoretain a share of any equity for creating successful businesses.
Some universities are also able to cross-subsidise capital requirements and commercialisationwith other functions such as contract research. This is the model used by Auckland University's
However VUW has a separate contract research segment that isn't aligned to Viclink.
Why should Victoria bother about commercialisation at all?
"We've got valuable IP, and its sensible to be thinking of how to maximise the value from that,"Quigley says.
"The question is what model do we use, and the point at which we plan for the university to exitprofitably and sell out."