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finding out new things. What this initiative has as part of its benefit is to try to convince young people who have an entrepreneurial gene in their genome that they might be able to use that to their benefit by pursuing that through science.
In many cases, [ students ] who have a bent in that direction won’ t pursue a career in science. They’ ll go into business or some other avenue. I think that’ s also one of the real impediments.
What are the challenges researchers face when it comes to translating research into commercial endeavours?
W-M: I guess the current issue that
[ EMCRs ] are facing is multifaceted. They face funding gaps, they face knowledge gaps, even just the lack of opportunities for them to continue on in their career. Commercialisation as an output then becomes even more and more challenging. We had a look at that and then said,‘ How can we make a difference as a leading industry player?’ We wanted to be able to create an industry first and this is an Australian first – an industryled initiative. And the reason this is different from others is because we have created it with a company that wants to make a difference on this industry issue. We want to deliver room for dialogue but, more importantly, we want to be able to deliver relevant and engaging resources that will help enable [ EMCRs ] to successfully traverse the commercialisation continuum.
DJ: There are many. Firstly, I think most of them just don’ t know how to do it. It’ s curious that we spend a lot of time educating young kids how to do science and how to write up their science or talk about the science and so on, but we don’ t ever teach them in our universities, in a science degree, how to commercialise their science. They have to learn this by osmosis. That’ s a big problem.
Secondly, quite often this commercialisation part of science is not intrinsic to every scientist. Quite often, scientists just don’ t have the right personality to do this. They’ re just not entrepreneurial, almost by definition. They’ re curious, they’ re aggressive about
What are the consequences of not being able to achieve successful commercialisation of scientific research?
W-M: One is with regard to the researchers themselves. As they look at an ongoing career, they need to make a choice. Are they going to be focused on publishing? Are they going to be focused on commercialising? What are the timelines? What are the other implications they need to juggle and face and just the hard balancing they need to be able to do? A lot of them are in the early stage of their career so just being able to gain knowledge or resources from a mentor who has been successful is going to make a difference. Hence, the Science Next Collaborative Think Tank Ambassadors.
Another consequence, if you look at it from a bigger picture perspective, is what we are able to bring as a life science industry to the country, to Australia – the effect on Australia’ s economy and the future of life sciences in the country as well. [ SNC ] wants to put more focus on this dialogue and this debate and we are going to create a position paper and aim to have it out by July. We also want to [ provide ] more educational resources and mentoring opportunities; hence, we are going to be running Science Next Collaborative forums by September as well. We look forward to that being able to make a difference.
Why is SNC unique?
DJ: Firstly it’ s, to my knowledge anyway, the only industry-led initiative in this area in Australia. I think that’ s important for a number of reasons. And there are other initiatives. There’ s the Australian Academy, Australian Association for Medical Research and so on. Many other organisations are trying to do something [ about commercialisation ] but they tend to target the funding organisations to try to get more funding. SNC is about trying to make people aware of the commercial opportunities in science.
How do you believe this will benefit young researchers when it comes to promoting and commercialising their research?
DJ: Firstly, it will create more jobs for people in this sector. Secondly, I think it’ s crucial that we help young people who are pursuing a career in science see that they are going to be doing something that’ s valuable to the community and that is translated into something that has the potential to change the lives of Australians. I think making people aware of the commercialisation opportunities is one of the real offshoots of this. n
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