Bringing New Ideas to Fruition

It’s not always easy to bridge the gap between academic research and the business world. Two recent articles offer perspectives on different aspects of the process:

• TURNING IDEAS INTO START-UPS. A recent New York Times article highlights university “idea incubators” — such as MIT’s Deshpande Center for Technological Innovation — that help professors bring their innovations to market.  Notes The New York Times:
  

  “M.I.T. is in the vanguard of a movement involving a handful of universities nationwide that work closely with investors to ensure that promising ideas are nurtured and turned into successful start-ups.” 

• COLLABORATIONS BETWEEN EXISTING BUSINESSES AND UNIVERSITY RESEARCHERS. An article in MIT Sloan Management Review’s Summer 2010 issue identifies seven best practices for industry-university research collaborations.  Why is that so important? The authors note that there is an “outcome-impact gap” — in that some collaborations between university researchers and businesses have major research outcomes, but don’t end up having comparably significant business impacts.