From research to investment: closing the gap

01The problem isn’t what we know

Opening the Agri X Fusion Red Meat Value Chain Collaboration Summit, Koos Nel of Agri X framed the challenge: “The problem is not necessarily what we don’t know. It’s often what we fail to do with what we collectively know.” Universities do research that too often never reaches commercial application; financial institutions sit with capital looking for the right projects; technology providers develop solutions but need market access.

02The thesis on the shelf

Prof Eugene Cloete opened his video message with an image that stayed with delegates: somewhere on a university shelf sits a thesis that could save a company millions, and somewhere down the road a manager is struggling with exactly the problem it solves. “The two have never met.”

The gap exists, he argued, not for lack of talent or goodwill, but because universities and industry run on different clocks and incentives: academics are rewarded for publications over years, industry for products over quarters. Good collaboration isn’t a company writing a cheque and waiting for a report, or a memorandum gathering dust. It starts with a shared vision and a question defined together, it moves through people who work in both worlds, “ideas travel best inside people, not inside reports”, and it is sustained by trust over time.

His asks were specific. Universities should value engagement, patents and spin-offs in promotion criteria and make IP agreements simpler. Industry should invest in the long game: “Not every research question will pay off this quarter, but the ones that do may define your next decade.” And both sides should agree up front who owns what and how results will be published. “Research gives us understanding. Industry gives us impact. Collaboration turns one into the other.”

03Start with a shared question

Prof Eugene Cloete, CEO of the Cape Higher Education Consortium, argued that collaboration between industry and academia shouldn’t be bound only by governance. It starts with a shared vision, and with the question defined together, so that researchers know what to look for and industry knows what it should get out.

Dr Andrea Campher of Standard Bank put the challenge plainly: we need to close the gap between research and investment. Measure, demonstrate, finance.

04Understanding who owns the IP

Jetane Charsley of the National Intellectual Property Management Office (NIPMO) explained that intellectual property law now regulates publicly funded research. Where outputs once ended in publications, regulation now requires them to be implemented in the community. Companies needn’t be alarmed if a university owns the IP: it can be licensed back. Co-ownership is legally possible but difficult in practice, and paying the full cost of the research allows ownership to be negotiated. Businesses can also claim a 150% tax deduction on qualifying R&D costs, including work with universities.

Dr Keoagile Modisakeng of the Agricultural Research Council (ARC) asked the question every partnership must answer: how do we make data accessible, protect the IP, and ensure it benefits the people of South Africa? The ARC holds national assets, including the National Databank for stock and game identification and INTERGIS, that the whole value chain depends on.

Dr Gerard Verhoef of Barnard Inc showed that university collaboration is already at work across agriculture, from feed trials and genetic testing to breeding programmes, precision farming and biobanks, and set out the biotrade value chain from land to retail.

05What it takes to get from proof of concept to product

Dr Otto Koekemoer of Design Biologix put the gap in perspective: proof of concept is only about 4% of the work. Clinical trials, scale-up, stability, registration dossiers and manufacturing make up the rest. Dr Gerard Verhoef agreed that negotiating the remaining 96% is the hard part, especially when researchers aren’t familiar with technology readiness levels. Karen Nel added: “A protein that elicits an immune response in a laboratory mouse is not a vaccine yet.”

Dr Keoagile Modisakeng of the ARC proposed a role for public research institutions in that gap: with a little public money, take a diagnostic or product from proof of concept at technology readiness level 4 to level 7 or 8, and engage investors with “skin in the game on behalf of the people of South Africa”. He also called for an open innovation exchange where industry posts its problems and researchers respond: “We will soon be irrelevant if we do not know the pain of industry.”

Prof Cloete noted that the four Western Cape universities share some 300 patents, yet very few have been commercialised, and suggested universities act as technology brokers rather than expecting professors to run start-ups. Dr Koekemoer’s advice for partnerships: start together, and decide at the beginning who will do what and who will pay.

06The long road to the farm

Dr Otto Koekemoer of Design Biologix showed what it takes to bring a veterinary vaccine to market: typically 8 to 12 years and R8 to R25 million, excluding internal costs. A new vaccine is “a long process beyond the publication”, complicated by multiple pathogens, changing farming practices and regulation.

Karen Nel, CEO of Design Biologix, added the market test: if vaccines are too expensive, farmers won’t vaccinate. A new product must work as well and cost less, or work better and cost the same, and be scalable, simple to make, quick to administer, affordable and impactful.

RMIS’s Field to Future programme shows the appetite on the industry side: 108 research proposals across eight topics, and a commitment to “double up” on that work.

07Make science aspirational

On the Day 2 closing panel of the Agri X Fusion Red Meat Value Chain Collaboration Summit, Dr De Wet Barnard of MSD Animal Health turned the research discussion to people: “Let’s brand and market science to combat stigma. Let’s motivate people to be scientists, not celebrities.” He pointed out that in China, scientists appear on billboards instead of celebrities.

It is a fitting challenge for a sector that, as Prof Edward Webb admitted on Day 1 of the Agri X Fusion Red Meat Value Chain Collaboration Summit, has done a poor job of communicating its science to the public. Closing the gap between research and investment also means building the next generation of researchers, and giving them role models.