Created by Know Hub Chile and Hub APTA, with the collaboration of the University of California, Riverside, the program provides the tools university researchers need to go beyond academia, designing and planning R&D projects focused on solving industry problems through direct contact with industry itself.
An idea can help create jobs, drive growth and transform people’s lives. But for that to happen, it needs to go beyond the limits of imagination and respond accurately to the needs of society. Otherwise, a good idea does not thrive and never becomes an innovation.
With this premise in mind, Know Hub Chile and Hub APTA created the Beyond Academy program for leading researchers and their teams in Chile. The initiative is based on the National Science Foundation (NSF) ICorps methodology, has the collaboration of the University of California, Riverside (UC Riverside), and seeks to narrow the disconnect between R&D&I projects in the country and the needs of industry.
Participants are given the tools to discover potential customers for their technologies and validate their value propositions through direct interviews with relevant industry players (known as “Customer Discovery”). The goal is to contribute to the cultural transformation of the scientific community, increasing the impact of its research results and technologies.
What is the experience like? Matías Martínez, of the PharmaLAMP team in the precision medicine area at Universidad de Chile, part of the 2022 cohort, says it was a very good experience: “although it was quite intense, it was very enriching and opens up possibilities for other kinds of research or a more applied approach to it.” He adds that they learned a lot and now have a new methodology to validate the potential impact of an application of their technology.
Carla Jara, of the Atenea team in the wine-growing area at Universidad de Chile, also describes the experience as exhausting but very enriching: “as academics we have the scientific and technical knowledge to validate the technology we develop, but we lacked knowledge about the commercial validation of that technology.” Thanks to Beyond Academy, Jara says, they were able to understand the fundamentals and apply economic concepts to a business model, or arrive at one, with a realistic perspective guided by experts.
Juan Figueroa, of the Yafün sustainable construction team at Universidad Católica del Maule, points to the value of being able to put a building material on the table and learning that, more than the material, it is the design that must be strengthened in terms of innovation and sustainability to make this type of product scalable in the market and thus move on to the next phase: having the machinery manufacturer produce bricks and agree to buy a license for the patent granted in Chile.
Working with mentors
“What I value most is the week-after-week work with mentor David Ochi on the different scenarios we advanced through, based on surveys of different stakeholders, and how the responses to those surveys fed our progress and supported the goals we wanted to achieve with the Yafün product. At the end of each session there was feedback from other specialists from the University of California, which reinforced where we stood and how we could improve our product going forward,” says Figueroa.
Working with the University of California mentors was key to the learning process. Martínez adds that, thanks to this support, they were able to consolidate their knowledge and apply it both to the interviews and to the weekly presentations, causing their progress to grow exponentially.
“With this program we were able to accelerate the learning process with a focus on the application of our technology. We are a new group with an emerging line of research, and being able to focus from the outset on the end user and on solving and validating a real problem means that the research results can reach the final beneficiary, which in our case is the patient, rather than remaining only in publications,” says the Universidad de Chile researcher.
All the participants agree that it is a program researchers should experience. “I would totally recommend this program to other researchers. It broadens the range of funds you can apply for, moving from more basic science toward applied science. It also makes it possible to focus the potential of research on solving problems present in the potential market,” Martínez emphasizes.
The Know Hub Chile team, Jara says, provided constant support throughout the program, resolving many questions so they could keep up with each challenge in presenting the weekly assignments. “Another very noteworthy point was the quality of the mentors. In our case, we were assigned Kevin Glen, with whom we had an excellent and very assertive relationship. He always gave us a perspective to improve or understand the economic situation, in a simple and more efficient way to be applied in the real world, and that translated into clear and precise presentations,” the Universidad de Chile researcher stresses.
