Issue link: https://htpgraphics.uberflip.com/i/116731
Why License? Section 2 A further consideration is market access. An established firm may already have its own marketing team and sales force, its own distribution channels and a well-respected brand and reputation. These will enable it to access the market for your product very effectively; by contrast commercialising the IP through a start-up company will require that company to create its access to the marketplace from scratch. It is possible to consider creating a company solely to attract some investment to develop your IP. This is more of a tactic as the founders of such companies are usually planning to license the developed IP, rather than planning to run a product or service-based company. Companies that are set-up for this purpose are usually called IP development start-ups or licensing start-ups (or spin-outs). They bring with them many of the attendant challenges of any spin-out and tend to conform to the usual process and steps involved. Whilst it may be tempting to go down this route to raise some capital in order to retain a degree of independence of development/control, it would be worth thoroughly testing whether it is in practice necessary to do so and to try a licensing approach first. If your IP is truly the "first-of-its-kind" and is likely to have a revolutionary impact in its field, there may not be an established player to whom you can license or, even if there is, that may not be the best way for you to derive the maximum value. Your commercialisation team will discuss such cases with you. Case Study Material Since licensing involves you directly taking part in an IP activity, it provides you with real experiences and will give you first-hand feedback from those people who are receiving the IP and then turning it into a commercial opportunity. This will often involve you in discussions about the financing, project management and the resourcing of the licence project, as well as introducing you to many people from other disciplines, such as product development and marketing. This enables you to develop "colourful" (but non-confidential) material which could be used in workshop discussions or research training programmes to enhance your research team's understanding of the perspective of and the demands upon those people who are concerned with taking research outputs to market. If you also have teaching duties, this "live" material might be interesting for students. 14