NEW ZEALAND: Value of commercialisation grows steadily

The value of research commercialisation is growing steadily at New Zealand universities, but the exercise is more for the public good than the benefit of institutions' balance sheets. Latest figures from Uconz, New Zealand's national sector group for university commercialisation offices, show the country's eight universities earned more than NZ$60 million (US$45 million) in cash and shares from the licensing of their academics' research in the four years up to and including 2006.

Within that figure, cash payments from licences rose from $4 million in 2003 to $10 million in 2006. The figures also showed that New Zealand universities raised more than $155 million for start-up companies between 2003 and 2006, forming 29 new start-ups and providing a total of 44 start-ups by 2006. The worth of those companies rose from $76 million in 2003 to $1.1 billion by the end of 2006.

But Auckland University of Technology commercialisation manager Luke Krieg said licensing activities and start-ups were more of a public good than a money-spinner for universities. Krieg said New Zealand was making a profit on a national basis in terms of the cost of research commercialisation versus the income from technology licensing.

"But on an individual basis not all universities can be expected to break even. University research commercialisation benefits the economy a lot more than the universities," he said. Nevertheless, universities needed to continue to commercialise their research, so they at least had the chance of creating a successful company, Krieg said.

Based on US figures, New Zealand's smallest universities could reasonably expect just one big success every 30 years and in fact the country as a whole was doing better than US averages in that respect. However, New Zealand universities were yet to spawn a spectacular success such as Google or Intel.

The Uconz figures show that university commercialisation offices received 736 "new invention disclosures", applied for 303 new patents and received 97 patents and 156 licences between 2003 and 2006.

Krieg said the median age of university commercialisation offices in New Zealand was just five years and improvements in commercialisation figures were due in part to a maturing of the university commercialisation sector in New Zealand. "Research commercialisation has become an industry in its own right," he said.

The New Zealand government had an agenda for economic transformation for some time, but had only started to explicitly support research commercialisation in recent years, Krieg said.

* John Gerritsen is editor of NZ Education Review.

John.Gerritsen@uw-news.com