Where's the Beef

BeefCAMPus 2007 has been really great so far

We launched the first BeefCAMPus in Mallorca in April 2007. 15 participants solved 9 real cases. Great stuff. You can read some of the testimonials at our new BeefCAMPus website . From Jacob Bar's and my perspective the most interesting challenge is the balance between SOLVING THE CASES and LEARNING methodology. Using real cases in real-time exercises is extremely complex both for us as trainers and certainly for the trainees. But using pre-studdied cases takes some of the authenticity out of the workshop.

In Cyprus (at the TII Summer School) we got the opportunity to work two days with 23 participants from 15 countries and started out by giving priority to methodology: guess what the trainees wanted?? Real case! So we worked with a case of mushroom culture and disinfectant technology. Really interesting. Jacob has tuned his fabulous search engine and it is now a power tool in the hands of the trained driver !!

The second Mallorca event takes place in late October 2007 and here we have reduced the number of cases and participants to be able to use real cases but also have time to work with methodology. We have universities from 3 countries and two startup companies, one of which is a gazelle with an exceptional growth over the latest 5 years.

We have agreed to deliver 3 more workshops in 2007: one in Canarias where we will be focusing on 7 startup companies; one in Portugal (with a mixed group of university tech transfer officers and startup companies) and finally one in Mallorca in December. 2008 promises to be even more interesting.

Stay tuned/come back and find out what we learnt.

Where's the Beef CAMPus?

Well, in Mallorca, of course!
This weblog covers most of the topics of my "Where's the Beef" course - mainly a one-day course. More than 200 professionals have participated in one of these courses over the last 18 months. Here's the announcement of a new version: a week-long training camp:Click here to read more

Commercialisation CAMPus Workshops: 5 days of practical work in Mallorca in March and April 2006

“Where's the Beef” – the course and methodology on Evaluation of Commercial Potential in Inventions and Innovation projects - has been offered to many groups over the latest five-six years. The format is a one-day course covering cases, background theory and methodology, but little time for real exercises and discussion.

Based on feedback, I have developed the concept of Beef CAMPus, a whole week concerned with building your own clear-cut action plans about how to commercialise a portfolio of concrete cases. How to build the business case of your own Technology Opportunities, and, as usual, a lot of learning.

Beef CAMPus will be offered on the island of Mallorca, which, apart from its natural beauty and friendliness, is easy and cheap to reach from almost anywhere in Europe. Together with local partners we offer the best training facilities.

The course is developed and managed together with Jacob Bar, the creator of the JBEngine.

NEW: Since Spring 2007 we have re-designed the format - have a look at our new BeefCAMPus website

Do Universities sell their IP at too low a price?

Imprimatur Capital (IC) started a new line of business around 2005, namely to source IP from universities, fund proof-of-concept work and forward-license inventions to next stage investors. IC has recruited universities in Russia, Ukraine, Baltic States, Singapore and Spain. I met their name in Spain recently and tried to find out more because I see IC as a new trend which is already moving fast in the US (eg-. Bridgehead Group)(their web site doesn't always work), who bought a new Danish start-up company recently. Formerly, I have described how Cancer Research Technology in London works. Also you might wish to study a BioTech group with Danish founders but now based in London: Bridge Bioresearch .

I found (used JBEngine) some documents about IC's mode of work in the east. I note that they get a first right of refusal to commercialise against infusing proof-of concept funding for project in the order of 2-5k....and maybe also larger sums (<10k) (maybe this reflects the "eastern" prices??). First impression: universities pay a high price to commercialise....?

I then went to Companies House in the UK to see their ownership and financial background. The company is controlled by two persons who seemingly won a lot of money in the IT Bubble economy and then decided to invest in new ventures. They must have seen how lucky they were to get out of their individual ventures before the bubble burst?? And saw that portfolio management is better. The two invested 2,5 million € in 2005 and convinced Barclay's Bank and a few other minority investors to drop another 1 million (so it seems from the accounts).

With that money and an option programme they hire some good professionals to go on a "fishing expedition" in universities around the world, assuming that expert due diligence will do the rest (pick winners). Good luck: IC may find itself in another bubble experience soon and/or must attract even more capital to survive.

The model is great, but there is a point of warning to universities who sign up: the money you get for giving away your inventions may just be too small....But there is another even more alarming signals for the many new "Knowledge Transfer Offices" or tech transfer services in universities: for 5-10 years you have now tried to commercialise your universities' inventions but most of you have a low score on actual hits - and consequently spend more money than you cost etc. There is a danger that dismayed rectors will conclude that this business cannot be done inside universities - and, if it's outside, why not sell to companies such as IC.

I have downloaded the Background documents on my BeefBlog (for participants in my Where's the Beef Course).

Commercial is Commercial is Commercial

We (me included, until now) often talk as if there is only a dichotomy between university and industry. Commercial means anything, which has left the university side. But is "commercial" really commercial?

Michael Kenward commented on my article on the "survey" of university commercialisation performance by writing:

A couple of points, do not lump all "European universities" together. In the UK at least it is not true that they have "only recently turned their focus on patents and licensing". You also miss another commercialisation route, the spin-out company. If anything, in the UK at least, this has been an overused option. Licensing can be a better bet. But it doesn't do to ignore spin outs.

Many spin outs, however, are not "commercial" at all! They have been "capitalized" by patient investors, but they don't make a profit. Recently I had an opportunity to review Geron Corp's Annual Reports: the company has "burnt" up to 30 million $ per year for more than 10 years. Look up any seed or venture capital fund and you will see the same picture. In my Danish home town, Østjysk Innovation in its 2005 annual report recorded losses in almost all of its portfolio companies. The same does the largest Danish innovation fund. These companies are recorded as "hits" or successes in the survey statistics.

Add to this that many of these funds are initially or substantially publicly funded.

Commercial is not - always - commercial. One more reason to be extremely careful in the use of university commercialisation performance comparisons.

EU beats US Universities on Commercialization Performance?

Two researchers from UNU Merit have made a report with the title: Developing internationally comparable indicators for the commercialization of publicly-funded research. Their basis for the report is that they have also conducted a survey for ASTP of ASTP members and their commercialization of research results and now they compare the survey and the use of indicators with four other surveys (AUTM in North America, one UK; a Canadian and an Australian survey).

The report got most attention because it concludes that European public research institutes outperform their US competitors on "licences executed" and start-ups created.

Arundel and Bordoy mention the ProTon Europe Survey (led by my good collaborator from Valencia, Fernando Conesa and his team) but dismisses it because it uses a wrong denominator (academics per institution). It's a pity because that survey and the work behind it tell us that Europe hardly can be compared with the US. A&B see only two ways of how industry can gain from public research: either through formal arrangements involved in patenting and licensing or the "open science" of publications, seminars etc.

European universities have only recently turned their focus on patents and licensing, whereas collaborative and contract research contracts have accounted for the majority of activity and income for many years.

A&B mention insights into this point gained from their reading of research from the Uni of Sussex SPRU. Professor Sodi and before him Keth Pavitt recommended the UK government to be careful about focusing too much on the formal and technology routes of the impact of oublic research on the economy in a wonderful set of articles and lectures: Talent, Not Technology.

Conclusions: PROs should support creation of standardised indicators as is being produced by ProTon Europe and others, but policy makers should remember to take a balanced view on the results. And each PRO could find a group of peers with which to keep close relations in order to monitor their own performance, but be sure to keep their findings a secret! Use it for developing new strategy!

(XIII) Companies don't survive- do patents?

I have started a discussion on this site about valuation of patents - and oppose econometric models, which assume extrapolation from past to future - without disruption. One condition for such assumptions would be stability over time - that products, markets, technologies are relatively stable. Now, more than ever, nothing is stable, however. To me the consequence is that it makes no sense to extrapolate more than 5 years, let alone 17 years, the lifetime of a patent. I'd even dare the statement that this trend undermines the logic of patenting!

I just made a sample of the Fortune 100 of Danish companies (www.borsen.dk has the list) and compared FY 2004 with FY 2001. 43 of FY 2001 companies are not on the FY 2004 list, as they have been acquired, merged, disappeared (sic!) etc.

The Global Entrepreneurship Monitor and similar Danish surveys show that the average lifetime of a DK company is now 5 years. ifferent innovation surveys show that the lifetime of a product or market is less than that.

This trend was pointed out 20 years ago by management guru Tom Peters, eg. in his  book Liberation Management, or Dee Hock's "Chaordic Age" books (amazon.com would have them).

Check out British Telecom's futurologist, Ian Pearson, and his amazing book Business 2010 http://www.icnet.dk/amazonpearson or his web site http://www.btplc.com/Innovation/News/timeline/index.htm , which gives an eye-opening view of the future. 

(VI) Where's the Beef? Pavitt.

Ernst Max Nielsen continues his series on "Where's the Beef?" (Click the Category on your right hand side: "Where's the Beef". The articles are numbered in Roman numbers: I, II, III etc. If you scroll down this site, you'll get the articles in reverse order)

This is the sixth article in the series "Where's the Beef": quick-and-dirty methods to make a go or no-go decision regarding whether or not and how to try to commercialize an invention.

Keith Pavitt: Segmentation and Taxanomies of companies

A second important contributor to practical innovation theory was Keith Pavitt from SPRU (Sussex University), whose pathbreaking analysis (together with good colleagues) has helped understand that we must ”segment” the concepts of business and of innovation to understand how innovation happens. Pavitt demonstrated how we may distinguish and predict innovation behaviour in and linkages between different types of businesses.

Not all businesses innovate themselves but depend on specialized suppliers, customers etc and such interlinked business form what Porter may wish to call a cluster. The usefulness for the tech transfer practitioner of Pavitt’s work is that we may direct our efforts to finding partners for inventions more precisely by being able to map possible interlinked businesses, who might have an interest in the invention. I have learned that quite often we need to bring together several actors in a cluster to push a given invention to market.

Innovation is Innovation is Innovation

Pavitt has shown us that we should distinguish between product and process innovation; between technological and market innovation; radical and incremental innovation. He has effectively made it clear that the ”locus” of innovation is not (always) one business (ltd company) but the interlinkage between several businesses. By way of such insights, the practitioner will also make sense of the observation that often two businesses will act not only in the cooperative mode but in another moment as competitors.

Some companies, as in the petrochemical business, are process intensive: a slight fraction of a percent of improvement is worth millions. Others rely on launching new products with a slightly better profit margin all the time. Others totally rely on others to do the innovation, as, for instance the classical industries such as textiles.

Pavitt and later attempts at adopting his thinking has actually matched the SIC code (for industry sector) with Pavitt’s segments, which makes it easy for you to make an early guess of what type of business you might be looking for (and finding them). Try to "google" "industry sic code pavitt" and see what happens.

The European Commission makes regular innovation benchmark studies in European industry using Pavitt’s basic concepts. Go to Cordis' homepage and have a look, e.g. Trendchart

(III) Where's the Beef? TIM

Ernst Max Nielsen continues his series on "Where's the Beef?" (Click the Category on your right hand side: "Where's the Beef". The articles are numbered in Roman numbers: I, II, III etc)

Technology & innovation management (TIM)

The theory of technology & innovation management (TIM) is a relatively young discipline. I shall refer to some key authors and sources, leaving it up to you to study the details. I shall refer to TIM as if it were one body of knowledge, which is a simplification, which I use for practical reasons.

The theory of TIM tries to establish a model of how a given idea or invention reaches the market place ands stays (competitive) there. In so doing we need basic concepts of the actors/stakeholders, their rationale for existence, their predicted/observed (innovation) behaviour and their interrelatedness.

Basically, TIM is a chapter of elementary business theory in that it challenges classical economic theory’s assumptions of behaviour, rationale and factor conditions of the economic actors.
In the “Where’s the Beef” Model, we first try to build a model into which our invention fits business-wise. Once this is done, we must ”populate” the model with real companies, markets and people. Then we must test the model assumptions with the population of targets to get a basis for judgement.

Michael Porter
Michael Porter has developed a complete body of theory, methodology and empirical evidence (plus a fair amount of misunderstood paraphrasing) to support his view of what makes industries and nations competitive. Industry in his terminology is not the individual legal entity called ”a limited company”, but rather a cluster of stakeholders who shape a given market. This is perhaps one of the most important lessons: we should not assume that the individual legal entity is the locus of innovation.
Mr. Porter has summarized his work in a number of diagrammatic ways. One such diagram is the “Porter Diamond”. Another useful diagram is Porter’s model of the building blocks of what he calls an ”industry” or a ”cluster”. Both diagrams are important, which we shall use as mnemonic devices to develop a methodology for rapid biz planning.

I ask you to prepare yourselves by searching the web for ”Michael Porter supply chain” and ”Michael Porter diamond”.