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Take a poll of a varied range of producers of consumer products about the value of academic research, and you will probably come away with a relatively negative view. Too slow, not focused, lack of definable deadlines, and a general inability to control outcomes tend to be the most often used complaints. This makes sense. The goal of the product manufacturer is to create quick, inexpensive sellable solutions based on concluded work. The goal of the academic is to delve deeper and deeper into more fundamental questions of the materials and of course, to create more research. In addition, the academic needs her results published in an open forum whereas the mere idea of letting anyone else see the fruits of consumer product research causes the manufacturer to break into a cold sweat. So an uneasy wariness exists between the two worlds, with neither believing that one understands the other.
Getting the two sides to talk to each other requires a little finesse, something that MIT’s Media Lab has done with some success over the years. Requiring companies to invest on an annual basis—from Hasbro to LG—the Media Lab then allows unfettered access to the research process (but not control of it), and also firs t refusal on the licensing of the intellectual property that comes of the work. This however, has been a model yet to be copied effectively by any other organization, and the Media Lab’s value needs to be fully understood by investors in order for them to see the benefits. The real value of the Lab for product manufacturers is to capture the process of research and discovery and the unexpected results that are encountered, rather than the end product itself. Unfortunately, enabling bright and relatively unencumbered minds to go wherever their interest leads them within a framework is something not every company can afford to fund.
The Media Lab fetishizes the process rather than the results, giving the funding companies insight and ideas. For a more results driven model, you need to look to the spin-off company, the “great idea” that came from some university-based research that was thought good enough to get funding in order to commercialize. Operating as an organization half-way between academia and a private company, these start-ups are typically created by professors, staffed by post-docs and forever in search of venture capital money to kick-start the effort and cut it loose from the university or government funding that allows it to survive from year to year. Successful ones commercialize in three years or less. They are a very valuable part of university funding, with profits typically being shared between the university faculty and the inventors. The major advantage that university research has over commercial research is the depth and scope of the work possible. Some areas of work can continue for five years with little success before they become breakthrough innovations, and even once they have been spotted as potential ideas for commercialization, it may take a few more years to iron out some of the kinks. The following examples explore companies with technologies close to commercialization that offer great potential, and also those that have successfully crossed over into profitable territory.
Water Resistant Plasma Treatments
 The area of plasma treatment of textiles has been of interest to engineers for a few years now due to the range of properties this process can impart. A high-performance commercialized solution using plasma treatment has been created by P2i, who is currently applying the process to footwear from Hi-Tec and Timberland. The process involves the use of a plasma (the fourth state of matter after solid, liquid and gas) that atomizes a specific polymer and deposits it on the surface of the product to be treated, giving it highly hydrophobic properties. When water comes into contact with the surface of the treated product, it beads up and rolls off. Because the polymer coating is deposited automatically, it becomes bonded with the substrate and will not wear off.
And because the coating is only a few microns thick, it is invisible to the eye and does not compromise the surface feel or “haptic” of the product. As well, using the coating produces minimal waste and has no adverse impact on the environment. The pioneering work to develop this technology was carried out at Durham University, with funding by the UK’s Ministry of Defence.
Spray-On Fabric
In the fashion arena, pioneering work in spray-on fabrics was conducted while Manel Torres  was studying for his PhD at the Royal College of Art (supervised by Susannah Handley from the Royal College of Art as well as Paul Luckhman from the Engineering Department of Imperial College London). This patented technology uses a liquid suspension that is sprayed from an aerosol can (or spray gun), with the cross linking of the fibers achieved during adhesion of the material on deposition. The properties of the fabric (thickness, color, fiber type) can be tailored to suit the needs of the client, and as a non-woven, the spray-on fabric offers possibilities for binding, lining, repairing, layering and molding as well as just covering.
InCycle
 Finally, a commercially successful spin-off from work done by Krishna Nadella as a grad student at the University of Washington in 2002 was inspired by concerns over variations in oil supply that caused commodity plastic prices to increase. This breakthrough process expands the volume of a simple packaging plastic by adding a central layer of CO2 gas that has been harvested as a waste material generated by power plants. The gas is introduced as bubbles into the film under pressure and then heated so that the bubbles expand. Using this process, the plastic sheet can be increased by up to 150% in width and length and by about 200% in thickness, while still maintaining a non-porous surface. This expansion can be achieved in almost any type of commodity plastic sheet (such as PET, PC, PLA, PP, ABS or TPU), but the company’s initial offering is using recycled PET with a sheet product called InCycle. The sheets, which come in standard white, can be easily printed, have superior thermal insulation, and are FDA compliant and grease- and water-proof. They offer the chance to significantly reduce the amount of material used for a given thermoformed plate or printed sign, while still maintaining a high-quality and durable outer skin.
This combination—academic depth of investigation coupled with entrepreneurship—enables success, and often for materials that are of a complexity and technological advancement not achievable by a commercial company. Though often derided by the fast moving product companies, there will always be a place for the slower moving but sometimes more impactful academic research, especially when backed by an entrepreneurial spirit. M
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