David Hemara says developers will have to run a Dragons' Den-style gauntlet before they get funding from the innovators' academy, which will work with partners such as Fonterra. Photo / Sarah Ivey
A new collaboration of science and business institutions, aimed at stimulating agricultural biotechnology, will have its own Dragons' Den-style team of experts to help it achieve results.
The Waikato Institute of Technology (Wintec) has received $1 million from the Tertiary Education Commission to work with Hamilton's Waikato Innovation
Park to establish the AgBio Innovators Academy.
The academy is designed to accelerate innovation from concept to the paddock or factory.
The academy works with heavyweight commercial partners - including Fonterra, Gallagher Group, LIC, NDA Engineering and Milfos - and the park's 50 tenants and other inventors.
Commercial partners have to commit the equivalent of one full-time staff member to the academy for the duration of the pilot.
Academy chairman David Hemara, also the general manager of strategic development at LIC, said the $1 million would pay for the time of tertiary sector experts, project costs and project management.
To get their hands on project funding, developers would have to run the intellectual gauntlet of a Dragons' Den-style forum made up of the CEOs of the commercial partners.
"We're trying to set some realistic commercial hurdles that firms have to jump over to get funding," said Hemara. Only $30,000 has been allocated so far.
There had been plans to have a workshop space to provide a venue for "neutral collaboration" between the parties but at this stage developers have been happy to collaborate online or hold meetings at their offices.
However, Hemara said providing a physical collaboration space during the pilot might be needed if projects needed "hard engineering" work.
He said the pilot had national significance in the way it was facilitating greater co-operation between inventors and tertiary institutions.
The academy's goals were the development of products that otherwise would not have made it; to have the tertiary sector more focused on product development research, and to get students involved in projects more attuned to commercial realities, Hemara said.
If the pilot was successful, it was hoped the commercial partners and tertiary institutions would help to pay for running the academy.
Innovation Park chief executive Derek Fairweather hoped that eventually there would be a building to house the academy.
The academy was also designed to be the first step in creating a precinct for a food and ingredients innovation centre, linked to AgResearch and Waikato University.
