Periodic Reporting for period 1 - QUESTPAIR (Pairing Business with Scientific Expertise)
Reporting period: 2019-09-01 to 2020-02-29
Collaborations between businesses and academics are a vital part of European Innovation Ecosystems. Despite this, many businesses are still experiencing problems with accessing suitable scientific services and goods. One reason is the lack of effective online services that help companies and scientists at universities to engage and exchange expertise, data, materials and equipment. The objective of this study was to explore the commercial, legal, and technical viability of an online platform that could meet this market need, and identify the mediation/brokerage services that companies, scientific experts and universities require.
During this project, we have assessed the commercial, technical, legal, and practical feasibility of developing a new online platform for companies and organisations to exchange expertise, data, materials and equipment with scientific experts within universities and research centres. To this end, we have conducted a survey and collected a wealth of data about the challenges and experiences from hundreds of companies, scientists, universities and technology transfer organisations that completed questionnaires on our website. Although the majority of participants had previously taken part in business-science projects, only a small fraction had used online platforms to do this. Almost two-thirds of the participating scientists and half of company representatives reported that it is likely or extremely likely that an online platform could be helpful to exchange scientific services and goods. From the questionnaires, along with numerous conversations and in-depth discussions with technology transfer organisations, we have identified key functionalities that we used in the development of a Minimum Viable Product (MVP). We have also made significant progress with software development and are planning to shortly release a public beta-version based on the MVP.
Within this study, we have evaluated various financial models for our platform and created a business plan to bring our products to market. We have also identified viable avenues for future development, some of which would require extensive development and pilot programmes with partners. Our findings suggest that our integral approach to combine detailed knowledge from the scientific and business communities with IT and software development can help to create a stronger European Innovation Ecosystem with better opportunities for business and science to collaborate and prosper together.