An Enterprising Burglar’s Approach to Unlocking the Research Innovation Vault
Most universities and research organisations have scientific understanding and inventions that will never see the light of day. And as a nation we spend billions of dollars every year creating more. Every now and then some brilliance is discovered and new products or services find their way to us that change our lives for the better, but this is very much the exception rather than the rule.
There has been a realisation by a lot of people lately that we need to get better at accessing what appears may be a treasure chest of innovation. But bringing it to life is not as simple as we hoped. There are factors at play that we don’t properly understand and it feels a bit like our valuable knowledge is trapped inside a huge vault, with walls and doors several feet thick. We need to find ways of getting it out so that the world can benefit from it, but we don’t know the combination to the lock.
Over the last 10 years I have been one of the few business minded people that has had access to the world of research. I have been working away at trying to figure out the combination to the lock all this time. I am a startup entrepreneur at heart, with a business strategist’s mindset, that has worked with hundreds of researchers, including the last 2 cohorts of the CSIRO ON Accelerator program.
Like any enterprising burglar I have learned that that there is no point trying to blast my way into the vault. It’s much better to drill a few holes in the lock’s case and peer inside at the gears. We need to understand the mechanics behind the lock to know which way and how far each rotation needs to be turned.
1. We need to see this challenge through the eyes of a researcher
It is not enough to have great science. You have to have a desire to drive great impact from that science. Researchers have this but ‘getting their science into the hands of the people that need it’ isn’t how they currently achieve impact. They have different aspirations like publication rates and citations and they are highly ambitious about achieving them.
To unlock the vault we need to offer researchers a different way of achieving impact and invite them to try it out. We shouldn’t underestimate the enormity of this. It requires a big internal transformation for anyone to leave the current way they understand the world and move to a new one. They have to be willing and have to have the courage to change tack.
The most popular approach at present is to invite researchers to join accelerator-style programs that teach them how to do it. If programs are well designed and leave a good impression researchers will be enthusiastic about moving to a different way of working.
We need to deliberately put ourselves in their shoes and consider how our content, activities and expectations will impact them on a personal level. Because even the most incredibly intelligent lecture on how to commercialise technology, for example, will fall short if it fails to inspire. Expensive programs with ambitious aims will flop if people don’t feel supported, and great teams will go backwards if people feel vulnerable and way too far out of their comfort zone.
Good program design addresses all of these things and more. If we put people first the results will follow.
2. We need to over-invest in building new skill sets
The skills required to commercialise technology are very different to the skills researchers have developed throughout their careers. If we are proposing to send researchers out into the big world to find potential customers for their technology we should be giving them the tools and support they need to be awesome at it.
We all know how frustrating it feels when we are set a task and don’t know how on earth we are going to get it done. Researchers often feel overwhelmed when they start thinking about building businesses around their technologies, which is not ideal because the best results are generated by people that are confident and energised by the work they are doing.
Program design needs to take into consideration that everyone learns in different ways and at different rates. I have worked with dozens of teams and have seen the timing of the ‘ah ha!’ moments vary for lots of reasons. One-size-fits-all programs that leave little room for adapting to the vibe don’t fare well. And an hour here, an hour there and only minutes of one-on-one time helping people apply what they are learning to their own situation is rarely enough to generate meaningful results.
If we are serious about unlocking the vault we need to invest in programs that truly boost researchers’ ability to achieve impact.
3. We need a team approach
There are lots of signs that we are at the beginning of a fundamental shift in Australia. It’s one of those rare moments in time when you look around and realise that some of the best minds in the country are focusing in different ways on achieving a similar goal. The momentum for change is coming from the startup sector, investors, universities, organisations like the CSIRO and, to varying degrees depending on who you talk to, government. Trailblazing people are inventing the new world including some I’ve had the privilege of collaborating with such as Tim Kastelle, Bill Bartee and Phil Morle.
Everyone is learning and we need a way to continuously share all of these learnings so we can level-up our efforts simultaneously. There should be no need for anyone to learn in isolation or start anything from scratch. There are enough people around now with the expertise to draw on — and build on. We are all part of something bigger. We need to talk often. We need to collaborate whenever we can. Everyone has a valuable contribution to make to unlocking the vault.
