How to invest in new discoveries?

[Tyler Durden]

From time to time I see in newspaper articles stuff like "scientists from the university of...have discovered a new..." which seems like a really fabulous idea/procedure/products, something surely to make money in the future.

However, I wonder how I would go about investing in these sorts of things?

From what I understand (and it's not much), scientists, mostly at universities, undergo research and when they come up with something, they sell it off to companies? How would I go about finding out which companies have bought which ideas/procedures/products? Or is there no way to find out?

 

[Julia]

Contact the relevant scientist and ask them.

 

[Starcraftmazter]

Usually the research group will start a new company to commercialise the research. At that stage they would probably seek venture capital - so you have to get in touch with whichever groups/associations do that sort of thing.

Sometimes if the research is extremely promising they might go for an IPO fairly quickly, but I think they would still need some initial capital to set up the company in what I guess would be private share issuances.

 

[skc]

From time to time I see in newspaper articles stuff like "scientists from the university of...have discovered a new..." which seems like a really fabulous idea/procedure/products, something surely to make money in the future.

However, I wonder how I would go about investing in these sorts of things?

From what I understand (and it's not much), scientists, mostly at universities, undergo research and when they come up with something, they sell it off to companies? How would I go about finding out which companies have bought which ideas/procedures/products? Or is there no way to find out?

Many universities have commericalisation arms that deal with the funding / marketing side of scientific discoveries.

e.g. UniQuest for Uni of Qld.

To invest you will have to buy into some venture capital fund... unless you are a known business angel or something like that.

Here's some info on some of the funds out there.

http://www.avcal.com.au/

Note that venture capital is pretty hit and miss. Of 20 invetments there might be 1 star, 3 OK, 6 zombies and 10 deaths.