Commercialization

A hand holding a lightbulb
The information on this page is geared towards researchers at Western and its affiliates. If you are a looking to partner with Western, learn more in our partnership section.

Drawing upon a mix of industry connections, sector-specific market knowledge and business development expertise, Western's technology transfer office will help you, the inventor, find a path to commercial success through licensing or a new company spin-off. We are proud to support researchers from London Health Sciences Research Centre Institute (LHSCRI) and Lawson Research Institute at St. Joseph's Health Care in addition to Western Reseachers.

Report of Innovation (ROI)

The first step in our commercialization process is submitting a Report of Innovation (ROI) through the Inventor Portal. The ROI is a confidential submission that outlines your findings and the background of your innovation, enabling our team to evaluate its viability.

Requires Western ID and Password

If you have questions about the ROI process, please contact ipm@uwo.ca.

Please submit your Report of Innovation in complete confidence. Using a pre-screening success criteria that often includes industry expert opinion, the team will quickly review the ROI to determine if your work has commercial market value.

The criteria include:

  • Product attributes;
  • Value proposition;
  • Prior art review;
  • Market prospects by partner; and
  • A life cycle return on investment analysis.

We will then work with you on introducing the innovation to a range of prospective industry partners and will always seek an agreement that is biased towards the researcher and beneficial to all parties.

Similarly, we will also consider new company spin-off options that may prove more lucrative and compelling to both the inventor and industry. We will assess and augment the potential spin-off’s value proposition, market prospects, financial requirement and operational needs to maximize the new company’s probability of success. Western Research and its partners will then assist the spin-off with legal assistance, accounting support, capital acquisition and governance, thus allowing the researcher to focus on what they do best.

To learn more about our invention evaluation process, please contact one of our Business Development Managers.

If you prefer to explore certain aspects of our services on your own, we invite you to read through the general information for inventors available on our commercialization process page.

Commercialization Training

We offer a variety of commercialization training programs for researchers and students:

Funding Innovation

A number of unique funding opportunities are available to Western researchers with intent to commercialize. Some of the most common that Western assists researchers to apply for include:

Western Innovation Fund (WIF)

Western Innovation Fund awards are intended to support the cost of projects that will advance innovative research results towards application and commercialization. The competitions are for one-time projects based on existing research initiatives. Applicants can only receive one grant per type of project or technology.

One of the first steps in the application process is to submit a Report of Invention (ROI).

For additional steps and guidelines, please visit the Western Innovation Fund program page.

External Funds

The following list consists of external links to the funding program websites. A member of our team can assist you in determining which of these are the best fit for your project.