Giving researchers commercialisation rights is just the start

Researchers already work entrepreneurially: they pursue uncertain ideas, assemble teams and secure resources. Yet academic careers are still organised around research, teaching and leadership. Commercialisation can appear to sit outside that work or even conflict with it.

A researcher who sees innovation as part of their academic role, however, may notice a recurring problem raised by industry, an application beyond the original project or a group that could benefit from a discovery.

Someone focused solely on publication may ask, “What study comes next?” A researcher who also sees themselves as an innovator may ask, “Who needs this? What problem could it solve? What must we test before someone can use it?”

Those questions lead towards disclosure.

At the Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, we often meet researchers after this shift has begun. They may not call themselves entrepreneurs, but they have started asking who could use their work and what it would take to move it forward.

New Zealand’s new Intellectual Property Management Policy makes this issue urgent. The policy applies to most intellectual property supported by funding from the Government’s science, innovation and technology portfolio from 1 July 2026. University researchers now have the first right to commercialise their inventions, either independently or with their university.

Disclosure is the gateway through which those rights become meaningful. Under the policy, researchers must disclose intellectual property that could reasonably be expected to have commercial potential, without unreasonable delay and before revealing it publicly. Once disclosed, its novelty, commercial potential, contributors, funding obligations and possible pathways can be assessed.

The policy can operate only on opportunities researchers bring forward. A researcher cannot disclose commercial potential they have not recognised.

Increasing the number and quality of disclosures will therefore require more than explaining the rules or improving a form. Universities must help researchers develop the confidence, language and judgement to recognise opportunities.

Disclosure must feel like a normal and responsible part of academic work, not a detour from it.

The policy gives researchers greater agency, but it also asks more of them. Commercialisation is rarely a clean handover. Researchers may need to remain involved while technical and market assumptions are tested, potential users are consulted, partners are found, and a route to market is developed. The policy itself anticipates university support with intellectual property protection and connections to relevant expertise, investors, partners and licensees.

Not every researcher should become a founder, and commercialisation is only one pathway to impact. Licensing, industry partnerships, professional practice or policy change may be more appropriate. But more academics need to recognise when their work has possibilities beyond publication and feel equipped to bring them forward.

The University of Edinburgh offers one model for making that shift.

Its Innovation Career Pathway formally recognises innovation alongside teaching and research as a direction for academic development. It supports the University’s ambition to double the number of innovation-active academics by 2030.

The accompanying Innovation Competency Framework shows staff what development can look like, from “potential innovator” to “innovation leader”. Its intellectual property pathway moves from understanding protection to submitting high-quality disclosures, developing protection strategies and finding ways to exploit IP.

An entrepreneurial mindset underpins the framework. Edinburgh describes it as the ability to seek and recognise emerging opportunities, take initiative and turn ideas into action.

This is more than commercialisation training. It tells researchers that innovation can be part of an academic career. It provides language for discussing their aspirations, a visible pathway for building capability and institutional recognition that the work matters.

New Zealand universities need to send the same signal.

Researchers need early exposure to opportunity recognition, intellectual property and pathways to impact. They need trusted support before an idea is ready for formal disclosure, visible colleagues who combine academic excellence with innovation and career systems that recognise the work required to translate research.

New Zealand has changed the rules around who can commercialise university inventions. Universities must now help researchers recognise opportunities and see bringing them forward as part of academic work.

More disclosures will not come from the policy alone. They will come when more academics look at their research and recognise an opportunity they are expected, equipped and supported to pursue.