The joint initiative between Know Hub Chile and Hub Apta is aimed at leading researchers and their teams, and is run in collaboration with the University of California, Riverside (UC Riverside).
Beyond Academy is currently underway: 9 teams from different higher education institutions are taking part in a 6-week program where, in addition to classes and interviews with innovation ecosystem players, they are mentored by specialists from the University of California, Riverside.
The goal is to give them tools and methodologies to discover potential customers for their technologies and validate their value propositions. With this, both Know Hub Chile and Hub Apta seek to contribute to the cultural transformation of the scientific community to increase the impact of its research results and technologies.
But although Beyond Academy officially started this year, the initiative already has a precedent: the program’s pilot, carried out in 2020, which brought together 12 teams and 64 researchers from different institutions.
One of the participating projects was BioAg Tech, a fungus-based biocontrol agent for various pests, led by Dr. Eduardo Tapia, a researcher in the plant health group of the Instituto de Investigaciones Agropecuarias (INIA).
In his words, “one of the main things we gained from the project was a better focus. And it isn’t just a project anymore; there is a possibility of transfer and of building a business. We now face a possibility of transfer and of building a business thanks to better understanding what the customer needs”.
“We changed the paradigm in how we look for information; it’s no longer just bibliographic, from papers. Now we go to companies and we have economic and impact indicators, both social and public. We also realized there was a whole environment out there and we were able to systematize it”, added Dr. Tapia, leader of a team that also includes researchers Lorena Barra, Daina Grinbergs, Fabiola Altimira, Mª Esperanza Sepúlveda and Jean Castro.
Dr. Tapia also acknowledges that everything related to their business model and value proposition changed during the program. That is how they discovered what their potential buyers really needed: a broad-spectrum biopesticide (covering about five pests) with a very stable formulation. “By the end of the program we understood that it was about investing in the environment, which means investing in the future with 15% growth”, he explained.
Beyond Academy 2021 is currently in its second week of training. We will share more information soon.
