Service offering

Commercialising technology

Universities and publicly owned laboratories and institutes are increasingly recognising the financial benefits and importance of commercialising the Intellectual Property (IP) developed under their auspices. Today, many universities are heavily incentivised to ensure that they deliver on their IP portfolio, and for some the revenue streams have contributed significantly to their financial well being and security. The successful exploitation of IP also provides institutions with a powerful platform and voice to promote themselves and raise awareness.

Academic institutions are under pressure to deliver on their IP portfolio. We can help by developing effective in-house infrastructures and processes and advising on best routes to commercialisation for individual ideas

Even though technology transfer offices are widespread in universities, not all have the resources, market knowledge or practical experience to assess the opportunities for their IP as thoroughly and objectively as they would wish.

At Sagentia we are well placed to commercialise public sector IP, having been closely involved with over 50 spin outs and start ups over our 20 year corporate history, resulting in a cumulative gross aggregate equity value peaking at over £1 billion.

We assist at two levels:

• commercialisation infrastructure and process
• commercialisation of individual ideas

Our approach to the commercialisation process is based on our in-house ‘Investment Engine’ - the series of stage gates we use to incubate concepts developed by staff either to be licensed or used to form a spin out company.

We have worked for several universities to review and improve their processes and train their technology transfer staff in how to evaluate ideas. We have also been involved in similar schemes at a regional level.

At Sagentia we acknowledge that not all ideas are potential spin outs. Increasingly, we have been working with RDAs to develop new models for knowledge transfer into established companies.

For technology transfer offices we provide due diligence reports on IP and on spin out companies. In this work we assess the competitive strength of a technology, the dynamics of the target market, possible business models, and the risks and uncertainties in the overall proposition.

We have played a central role in a major scheme to commercialise IP coming out of Scottish universities. The initiative takes ideas from an early stage through to a demonstrator. The scheme’s success has resulted in its adoption as a best practice model by other regions in the UK. In our role as ‘outcome manager’, we were involved in assessing the strength of an opportunity, researching the market, and managing the process of producing a credible demonstrator that could be used to both generate interest among customers and prospects, and raise funds for ongoing development.