Society Benefits from the Commercialisation of Research

In recent years, Aalborg University has been developing methods to ensure that new ideas created in the research environment are implemented in the business sector. Here, Dean Frede Blaabjerg explains how the university collaborates with companies to utilise research.

By Hans Emborg Bünemann

When a researcher at Aalborg University (AAU) has an idea with a commercial potential, the researcher’s head of faculty passes it on to the university department AAU Innovation. Here, staff with market insight and expertise in business development assess whether the idea has sufficient potential to justify additional efforts. Frede Blaabjerg, dean at the university’s Faculties of Engineering, Science and Medicine explains:

"Creativity and innovation are key concepts in AAU’s value base. We don’t stop at the prototype but also consider the commercial applications. Obviously, the researchers’ good ideas should be used to generate jobs, tax revenue, exports etc."

Selling the Idea Before It Is Patented

Commercialisation has not been a gold mine for the university. The economic results of the first few years of this initiative since 2000 were negative, but since 2007 the university has more or less broken even, says Frede Blaabjerg.
"At first, we spent a lot of money patenting products with a view to selling them afterwards. But maintaining a world-wide patent costs upward of a million Danish kroner (135,000 euro). And rather than buying a patent, many companies prefer getting involved in the development process. Thus, in 2006 we adopted a new strategy, and now we often include the companies in the process at an early stage and let them buy the rights to an idea from us prior to patenting."

He does mention one example of a patent that AAU expects to see decent earnings on in coming years. Together with their supervisor – one of AAU’s researchers – a group of students developed a new method for measuring and analysing heart sound.
"The invention is a smart plaster that can listen to the coronary artery. Wireless technology transfers the readings to a computer, which analyses the result and reveals whether any whistling sounds are due to restrictions of the blood vessels. Naturally, this is of interest to the medical industry, not least because arteriosclerosis is the leading cause of death in Europe," says Frede Blaabjerg.

One perspective in the research project The acoustic heart plaster is to be able to detect an upcoming coronary thrombosis before it occurs. The heart plaster is being developed in a collaboration between Aalborg University and the health care company Coloplast with partial funding from the Danish National Advanced Technology Foundation. Illustration: Made available by Coloplast.

Incentives and Idea Culture

However, the global economic crisis has not made it any easier to get the researchers’ good ideas off the ground. Frede Blaabjerg says that even the best ideas can be difficult to sell in a market characterised by uncertainty and crisis. But the incentive to work for a commercial implementation of the ideas is there, both for the individual researcher and for his or her faculty.
"Any earnings from the sale of a patent or the rights to an idea are distributed with 1/3 to the originator, i.e. the researcher, 1/3 to his or her faculty and 1/3 to the university," he explains.

Frede Blaabjerg also points out that it is natural for researchers to keep the practical potential of their research in mind, since both the educational programmes and the research environment at AAU are problem-and-solution-based. The application-oriented approach has characterised the university and its values since the founding in 1974. He says,

"Over the years, we have developed a strong idea culture, which means that good ideas are not left in a desk drawer; instead their economic potential is addressed and assessed."

Power from Wind Mills

As an example of an invention that has been commercialised, Frede Blaabjerg mentions that AAU researchers have developed a way of connecting wind mills to the power grid that makes the mills less vulnerable to grid irregularities.
"Big fluctuations in the power flow tend to make wind mills cut out. Our researchers have now solved this issue with a small piece of software, which we have subsequently sold to the wind mill industry," he says.

Researchers at AAU working with the energy technology company Danfoss have developed a way of mapping the potential for removing disruptions in the power grid, thus strengthening the stability of wind power production. Photo: Henning Bagger

The Administrative Set-Up Is Essential

In order to utilise and develop ideas that come up in the research environment, Frede Blaabjerg says it is crucial to have an administrative set-up that ensures the necessary competencies for getting ideas off the drawing board.
"We made this a priority by establishing the department AAU Innovation, which has competencies related to fundraising, market analysis, business acumen and intellectual property rights (IPR)," he says and adds that AAU views research as a creative force that ensures society’s continued development.

Match-Making Between Researchers and Businesses

However, establishing a research environment that creates good ideas and ensuring that the university is equipped to assess the business potential of these ideas is only part of the equation. It is also necessary to find the right match between the given idea and the company or companies to whom the idea might be relevant. With this in mind, a partnership consisting of AAU, the University of Southern Denmark and the University of Aarhus has developed a network of companies that participate in so-called University Technology Matchmaking events, for example within the fields of IT, electronics, energy and environmental issues. Here, companies can meet the researchers behind the latest new technologies and initiate the dialogue that may eventually develop into a rewarding collaboration between the research environment and a company.