Realities of R&D as a business: MBI's experience

Abstract

The level of effort in a R&D activity on research or development depends upon whether the R&D activity is basic or applied. In general, the R&D at a university is focused more on the research (R of R&D) whereas the emphasis in an industrial R&D is more on the development (D of R&D) and less on research. In the past, this created a gap difficult to bridge between the R&D needs of an industrial sector and the R&D output from university and governmental laboratories. The recent success in R&D as a business has mainly been due to understanding the critical steps needed to take an idea to a marketplace and, thus, the emphasis on R or D has become a moving target depending upon the need. MBI International, a nonprofit R&D organization, was created to bridge the gap between academic and industrial R&D and to validate, develop and demonstrate technologies having commercial potential in the industrial sector. In the process, MBI developed partnerships with universities, governmental agencies, foundations, and industries to resource innovative technologies, funds, physical facilities and market opportunities to make the R&D business a reality. In this paper, we present MBI's experience in developing and commercializing R&D technologies in several new spin-off companies, joint ventures, and out-licensing.