Adam J. Shohet, Business Development Manager, QinetiQ Research Services
With defence budgets under increasing pressure, and the MOD transitioning to become less of an ‘active’ army, how can defence suppliers and partners ensure maximum commercialisation of their R&D efforts?
At QinetiQ we are used to looking at commercialisation of technology and thinking about what to consider in preparation for going to market; how to evaluate and assess an idea (balancing time, cost and potential); whether it’s possible to fast track innovation; and how far to develop an idea before commercialisation.
Our history of groundbreaking R&D and exploitation of innovation has given QinetiQ some fundamental understandings in this field:
- Long-term investment in R&D is the key to growth, both for your company’s balance sheet and for strengthening the UK economy. Innovation needs to be managed carefully to maximise the chances of successful commercialisation. Usually the inventor isn’t the best person to do this; instead, someone with a greater ability to distance themselves from the idea and take an objective view of its progress should undertake this role.
- Innovation is about people so you need to ensure that your organisational alignment creates an environment that fosters innovation.
- Timing is everything. To assess an innovation’s half-life you need a deep understanding of the market, and where and how your innovation fits into it. Understanding the timing to exploit the technology requires a subjective assessment of factors such as the technology roadmap of the innovation, who is best placed to take it to market, and whether to consider integration with other equipment or services.
Here are just two examples of how QinetiQ exploited IP that came from our core R&D activities to successfully bring innovation to market:
Stealthy wind turbines
In the mid 1990s, when QinetiQ was still part of DERA, our Stealth Materials group was developing radar absorbing materials for use on military platforms, as well as experimenting with new technologies that allowed rapid screen-printing of metals and resistive inks onto textiles.
Around the same time, wind farms were emerging as a viable alternative to fossil fuelled power stations, but if situated close to airports, the blades were picked up by air traffic control (ATC) radar, and appeared as light aircraft. Unfortunately, most wind farm locations where planning applications were granted were close enough to existing radar installations to cause a potential problem.
A solution was to use military radar stealth technology to reduce reflections from the blades, keeping them undetected by radars. This solution was made possible through the implementation of a radar absorber within a flexible, textile substrate that could be integrated within the carefully engineered wind turbine blades.
In this case, the requirement for stealthy wind turbine blades provided a specific market opportunity for exploitation of two ideas to form new IP that was protectable and valuable. The project to develop the necessary IP took seven years in close collaboration with the customer to bear fruit in the market.
As is often the case, the project delivered additional IP, as well as de-risking the large scale manufacture of printed radar absorbing materials now available to the UK’s armed forces without the need to invest directly.
Acoustic damping submarine tiles
The IP was well-developed to protect the UK’s submarine fleet from sonar detection, but couldn’t be exported due to obvious national security reasons. However, bespoke solutions, with agreement from UK MOD, have been supplied to foreign navies, giving them the advantage of the UK’s technology base in this area, including modelling, design, formulation and small batch manufacturing, in addition to specific dock-side support on tile fitting and training.
The timeline from market opportunity to commercialisation is much shorter for an established technology exploited overseas, which makes this a very attractive model as long as there’s a viable answer to existing national security restrictions. The route to commercialisation is relatively low risk and doesn’t require significant investment. Additional benefits include the forging of strategic alliances with overseas governments through export sales of military technology.
QinetiQ has lots of valuable IP awaiting exploitation, and a highly talented pool of innovators – our People Who Know How – who continue to invent. Additionally, we’re always looking to improve and develop existing products to be, for example, lighter, have a smaller footprint, more cost-efficient … Taking stock of what we’ve done well has allowed us to build a model for managing innovation successfully from concept to commercialisation.
To discuss this in more detail please contact me on AJSHOHET@qinetiq.com