PERSPECTIVES OF OFFICERS ON OBSTACLES AFFECTING MALAYSIAN UNIVERSITY SYMBIOSIS PROGRAM IN BUSINESS-ACADEMIA COMMERCIALIZATION

The significance of commercialization of academic research results is commonly recognized largely due to its positive effect on the economic growth of a country. The universities are being encouraged to commercialize their research results instead of leaving the research results as inventions in the laboratory. Owing to the significance of the commercialization, a program i.e. University Symbiosis Program was introduced by Malaysian Technology Development Corporation in Malaysia with the main purpose to commercialize universities’ technologies that were invented by academic researchers. In University Symbiosis Program, the technopreneurs that were appointed from a pool of young graduates are required to cooperate with academic researchers to form spin-off companies and to commercialize the technologies. The commercialization of University Symbiosis Program is expected to be uneasy due to the technopreneurs are young graduates that most of them have no entrepreneurial and technical experience. Furthermore, the academic researchers might have less entrepreneurial and technical skills. As indicated by an officer in charge of University Symbiosis Program, the failure rate for the commercialization of University Symbiosis Program is 90 percent or higher. Therefore, this study aims to find out the obstacles that could affect University Symbiosis Program so that the improvements in the program can be made. The interviews and personal communications were carried out with MTDC’s and university’s officers in charge of University Symbiosis Program in exploring the obstacles affecting University Symbiosis Program. The result shows that the obstacles include competency, expectation, culture, commitment and management of government funding. The obstacles identified in this study could be used as a guideline for the commercialization of other spin-off companies in Malaysia.