RESEARCHERS are probably not the best people to commercialise their own
ideas. I was forced to that conclusion after chairing a lively debate on the
issue at the Australian Research Management Conference in Brisbane recently.
On one side was the director of the Centre for Drug Design and Development at
the University of Queensland, Peter Andrews, who argued that productive
researchers are in the best possible position to appreciate the commercial
benefits of their findings.
But Chris Fell, the deputy vice-chancellor (research) at the University of
New South Wales, pointed out that researchers are very unlikely to be trained in…
