You can't be what you can't see: From researcher to entrepreneur - a collaborative cross disciplinary approach

There is an increasing emphasis on educational institutions to measure research impact beyond publications in areas such as research commercialization. Likewise, policymakers are keen to increase the impact of publicly funded research in fostering commercial innovation, spin outs and industry linkages particularly in the science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) arena. Despite the importance of research commercialization, the frequency, extent, and quality varies significantly across universities This research investigates the challenges of research commercialisation and proposes a range of entrepreneurship training programmes to overcome these challenges. The results highlight the importance of the process applied in developing such programmes and the role of collaboration and cross departmental partnerships as a means of complementing discipline-specific domains to address the needs of groups who fit between domains.