You've explored external partnerships. Now let's look at two sectors that bridge research and impact: entrepreneurship (moving ideas toward commercialization) and research infrastructure (the shared facilities and resources that enable science).
This issue is for anyone who hasn't considered incubators, tech transfer, or shared facilities as partnership opportunities. It's for researchers who think commercialization is "selling out" and faculty who haven't realized their lab itself might be infrastructure others could use.
The key insight: entrepreneurship and infrastructure partnerships demonstrate the full cycle of research impact—from discovery to application and from individual lab to shared resource.
A colleague mentions your research could have commercial potential. You're not sure if that's a compliment or a critique. Doesn't commercialization distract from real science?
Or maybe you've used a core facility for years without thinking about it as a partnership opportunity. It's just where the instrument is.
These blind spots—seeing entrepreneurship as distraction and infrastructure as backdrop—hide significant partnership potential.