Swinburne Knowledge

The role of Swinburne Knowledge is broadly to facilitate, support, and monitor some of the University’s commercialisation activities. This extends to the provision of advice and expertise to managers of units operating or planning commercial activities, and to senior managers.

Swinburne Knowledge has systems to identify and evaluate the commercial potential of emerging opportunities, and to assess applications for seed funding for new ventures and allocate funding. The latter function draws on a significant level of outside commercial expertise.

The primary vehicles for commercialisation of University IP will be: establishing spin-off companies; licensing; and contracting various commercial activities. Overseas practice tends to suggest that for smaller Universities, establishing spin-off companies delivers the best commercial results.

It is recognised that Swinburne has many opportunities to commercialise the University’s traditional activities in provision of fee-for-service courses, research contracts, consultancy and so forth, as such opportunities are likely to be closer to the market. Commercialisation of technology is inherently a long term process, and it will be scaled up gradually over time.

For details of research areas and emerging commercial opportunities, visit Swinburne’s Index of Research Centres