Have you closed an amazing deal in the last 12 months? Has your organisation pulled off an exciting industry engagement strategy in the last 18 months? Or Is your office doing great things in supporting entrepreneurial activity within your research organisation? If you’re doing great things then the sector wants to hear about it! Share your achievement with the rest of the member base and go in the draw to win complimentary passes to the Annual Conference, press coverage and more.
The KCA Research Commercialisation Awards acknowledge the great work of KCA member TT/KE practitioners in facilitating public sector research outcomes being put to use in the wider community. They are the only of their kind in the region, and KCA is pleased to be running these awards for our members for the third year running, and celebrate their achievements and contributions to the sector.
The KCA Research Commercialisation Awards are open to all KCA members and their respective research and industry partners. The idea behind the awards is to showcase and recognise the powerful relationships and partnerships transforming our country’s cutting edge research into products and services; the majority of which improve and benefit the lives of everyone in our community, return economic value, and/or increase our nation’s competitiveness globally.
The Categories
As the role of the tech transfer office evolves and the spectrum of services expands, the scope of the KCA awards does too. As such, the 2016 Awards have undergone a slight makeover and now we have three award categories.
The first, old faithful, will remain mostly the same for 2016:
Best Commercial Deal
The Best Commercial Deal can be for any form of commercialisation of knowledge (licensing, spin-out, consulting, contract R&D), but must have been completed no earlier than 31 March 2015. Submissions into this category evaluated on the following criteria:
- the nature of the deal (what makes it special? value, scope, complexity etc)
- how the negotiated deal strikes a “win-win” balance for all parties involved
Best Industry Engagement Strategy
To keep in line with current trends, our second award category has been “rebranded” as the Best Industry Engagement Strategy.
Engagement must be between a research institution/their respected commercial arm and either a public or private business/industry partner/government agency, and the project/initiative must be current (no longer than 18 months old). Submissions into this category will be evaluated on the following criteria:
- the nature of the engagement strategy (the relationship between both parties, the scope of the strategy, the complexity of the arrangement, the uniqueness of the arrangement)
- the current and future benefits of the relationship to the research partner
- the current and future benefits of the relationship to the business partner
Best Entrepreneurial Support Initiative
Adding a bit of spice to the line-up is our brand new category the Best Organisational Entrepreneurship Initiative.
This category reflects the change in scope of many Australian PFRO commercial offices to offer support services to their research organisation in relation to staff and student entrepreneurship. This category seeks to celebrate the wins and value-add services being provided by the commercial office to their parent institution during the past 12 months. Submissions into this category will be evaluated on the following criteria:
- the nature of the support initiative (scope, size, complexity)
- the value-add to the research organisation
- the value-add to the entrepreneur(s)
If your office has engaged in an interesting commercial project, collaborated with an external party in a unique way, or has been at the forefront in providing support services for entrepreneurial activity within your organisation, KCA invites you to nominate your project, initiative or engagement piece to be considered for the 2016 Research Commercialisation Awards.
How to Enter
- Fill out the nomination form and return it to Mel by 14 July.
- A panel of industry experts will review your nomination form and select three finalists in each category.
- Finalists will be announced on 4 August. Please note that finalists will now be annouced on 10 August
- Finalists will be asked to produce either a written or video synopsis of their project to be uploaded to the KCA website for the wider community to learn more about the final line-up
- Finalists will also be invited to give an 8 minute presentation of their project outcomes and learnings at the KCA Annual Conference on Thursday 1 September in Brisbane.
- Winners of the three categories (as decided by the expert judging panel), will be announced at a special dinner integrated into the format of the KCA Annual Conference on Thursday 1st September, 2016 in Brisbane (venue TBC), 6:30-10:30pm.
Judging Panel
- Erol Harvey, CEO, MiniFab
- Dan Grant, PVC Industry Engagement, LaTrobe University
- Anna Rooke, CEO, QUT Creative Enterprise Australia
Prizes
The winner of the Industry Engagement category will receive two tickets to attend the 2017 AUTM Annual Meeting in Hollywood, Florida. Thank you very much to AUTM for sponsoring this prize!
PraxisUnico is also supporting the 2016 Awards and has kindly sponsored two tickets to attend the 2017 PraxisUnico Annual Conference. Thank you PraxisUnico!
Our third award category sponsor, and also very generously sponsoring two tickets to attend their 2017 annual meeting, is ASTP-Proton. Thank you ASTP-Proton!
Media Sponsor
Assisting KCA to raise the profile of the fantastic research outcomes making the finals of the 2016 KCA Awards are the fantastic folk at gemaker. gemaker offer their clients bespoke solutions and services spanning the entirety of the commercialisation cycle. Applying proven methodology and executed with passion, the team at gemaker can help you with commercial strategy, market research, marketing and communications, sales and new product development, grants, start-ups, access and pivot and much much more. This is the fourth year in a row that gemaker have come on board in support of a KCA event – a big thank you to gemaker for their continued support.
