It has been often observed that the departments handling the Intellectual Property (IP) of research institutes do not have adequate manpower / expertise to commercialize the IP. Consequently, they either post the details of the IP on the web or engage consultancy firms to market them. While the former is an open ended exercise with no guarantee of the IP being picked up, the latter also becomes a half-hearted exercise as the consultancy firms do not get paid for the ground-work done till there is a successful transaction. While the consultancy firms argue that they need to be paid for the expenses incurred irrespective of a successful transaction, the research institutes counter that argument by stating that there is no foolproof method to check the claims for the money spent by the consultancy firms for undertaking this exercise. Ultimately, it is the research institute which suffers as with passing days, the value as well as the life of the IP keeps going down.
A business model is proposed where the research institute stands to benefit from the IP till its actual commercialization takes place. Whenever a consultancy firm is engaged for the commercialization activity, it should be asked to deposit a fixed amount of money in lump-sum to the research institute which will be held for the period allocated to the consultancy firm to evaluate / commercialize the IP. During that period, the deposited money could be invested by the research institute in any instrument which will give returns in a very short period. Once the allocated period is over, the research institute may return the principal amount (initial deposit) back to the consultancy firm irrespective of whether it has been able to successfully commercialize the assigned IP.
This process would not only help the research institute in capitalizing on the exclusivity period given to the consultancy firm, it would also ensure that the non-committed consultancy firms get filtered out who would otherwise waste the exclusivity given, indirectly devaluing the IP.
A business model is proposed where the research institute stands to benefit from the IP till its actual commercialization takes place. Whenever a consultancy firm is engaged for the commercialization activity, it should be asked to deposit a fixed amount of money in lump-sum to the research institute which will be held for the period allocated to the consultancy firm to evaluate / commercialize the IP. During that period, the deposited money could be invested by the research institute in any instrument which will give returns in a very short period. Once the allocated period is over, the research institute may return the principal amount (initial deposit) back to the consultancy firm irrespective of whether it has been able to successfully commercialize the assigned IP.
This process would not only help the research institute in capitalizing on the exclusivity period given to the consultancy firm, it would also ensure that the non-committed consultancy firms get filtered out who would otherwise waste the exclusivity given, indirectly devaluing the IP.
No comments:
Post a Comment