Coller Institute of Venture at Tel Aviv University 缩小产业界与学术界之间的创新差异 Numerous gaps are created when the industry and the academia try to work together. To understand what causes these gaps from the industry point of view, and how can they be reduced, we spoke to Dr. Liat Hayardeny from the Research Department at Teva Pharmaceuticals.
According to Dr. Hayardeni, the gap is created because often scientists are led by their research, while the industry has a different set of eyes and sees the commercial potential beside science, and what might be needed in the market. She believes that there should be a person or company that helps the scientists and guides them to do research that has an opportunity to be translated later on into the industry. Dr. Hayardeni spoke at the Deep Innovation Workshop held by CIV.
The gap between industry and academia is characteristic of Deep Innovation – namely, innovation in biomedicine, nanotechnology, neuroscience and pharmaceuticals, which is time and resource-consuming, dissuading venture capitalists from investing in these projects at an early stage – when they need the money the most to proceed with the research. In an article published in CVR Issue #3, Ram Vaisbourd, VP R&D of Teva, termed this phenomenon “The Valley of Death”, demonstrating that many good ideas are left astray because of this gap.
As a matter of fact, there are but a few venture ecosystems in the world that are capable of successfully dealing with this gap. Recently we have presented the case of Boston’s CIMIT, and it is not alone – according to Lita Nelsen, Director (ret.) of the MIT Technology Licensing Office, the Kendall Square (Cambridge, MA) venture ecosystem is much more capable of dealing with Deep Innovation ventures because of the high proportion of researchers in the local VC funds. Being able to understand the needs of researchers in sciences and the rationale behind long-term research endeavours, these knowledge-rich VCs are willing to make long-term investments, advancing university ventures and shortening the gap between academia and industry.
Mrs. Nelsen will speak at UV2017HK – UniVenture Visions 2017 – along with other prominent leaders of University Venture. The symposium is to take place on April 23-rd, 2017 in Hong Kong.
Special Early Bird discounts are available – register now and use coupon KENDALLSQ for a 15% discount (valid until 15-Nov-2016).
