The Role of SMEs in Commercialising University Research & Development: The Asia-Pacific Experience

Technopreneurs are emerging in the New Economy; yet Australia has a relatively weak innovation system. Authored by the Deputy Vice Chancellor of Curtin International, Curtin University of Technology, this article enlightens the reader about technopreneurship. In this important think-piece, Professor Milton-Smith reflects on current realities; he addresses Australia's relatively weak innovation system and argues that a successful businessmodel is a necessity. He shows that we can learn from successful facilitators of research commercialisation, such as Yissum, which is the research development company of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Zernike, a venture capital company in the Netherlands. Although Yissum is a university-based company, it has established an unusual record of achievement in technology transfer. It is currently a large source of applied research projects, filing 30 to 40 patent applications per year and, at any one time, promoting around 200 projects.