Outcomes of the Australian Seafood Cooperative Research Centre cannot be successful without a well defined and implemented commercialisation and utilisation program. What's the point of doing research and development if industry never uses it, no one knows about it or we can not find other business opportunities that may benefit the Australian seafood industry?

Our Commercialisation and Utilisation Program (Program 4) has three components. These are:

Communication

Communication is all about getting our outputs to industry and the public in a useable and understandable format. To do this effectively it is very important that we also have efficient internal communciations with our participants and other relevant stakeholders.

We also develop strong communication links with other users of our research, including seafood consumers (through relevant seafood promotional bodies such as Seafood Experience Australia) to be able to optimise industrial, commercial and economic benefits.

Knowledge Processes and Technology Transfer

Knowledge processes and technology transfer is about ensuring our research is actively provided to end-users for commercialisation. We want our research and development to make an impact!

Success in knowledge processes and technology transfer depend on a strong commercial mindset among our research community. We achieve this by ensuring that all our researchers, in conjunction with the appropriate participants, identify commercialisation and utilisation opportunities from the outset of each project, and that those opportunities are exploited methodically for the duration of the project.

Intellectual Property Management

Intellectual property management is critical for ensuring our research is effectively commercialised through protection of our intellectual property. This is important for realising our commercial and industry benefit for the Australian seafood industry or specific sectors within the industry as well as protecting it for the wider economic or research benefit of the Australian community.

We do this by maintining a register of intellectual property which is established from an early stage for each project. The register describes the researchers involved, the research provider entity, the industry partner and the beneficiaries of any licensing agreement, royalty payment etc. Intellectual property is assigned to the relevant participants on a percentage basis that is agreed in advance for fair and appropriate allocation, including significant re-investment in the Cooperative Research Centre.

Another important reason to ensure intellectual property is well managed is that there may be opportunities for other commercial activities such as licensing deals with non-Cooperative Research Centre partners, particularly from overseas, who can benefit from the technology without harming the competitiveness of the local seafood industry, joint ventures that allow large entities to be formed that can benefit from economies of scale, access to new markets etc. and establishment of new companies to focus on commercial development of particularly strong and innovative technology. These types of activities also have the potential to generate capital that could be reinvested back in to Australian Seafood Cooperative Research Centre research activities.

This page was last updated: 30th March 2009