Success Story #1
Flintbox® - Leading the World to Early Stage Research
Flintbox® is an online platform for marketing and licensing the outcomes of research taking place in and around universities. Flintbox® allows organizations to describe and publish research projects and associated products arising from the research and post them for online license, purchase and download.
Through the use of the Flintbox® on-line platform, organizations can increase awareness and encourage collaboration between providers and users/purchasers of innovative research on a global level.
Flintbox® is critical to small universities and colleges that lack internal resources to distribute or sell products of that institute’s research community. It is also beneficial to professionals who are under mounting pressure from university administrators, funding agencies and other involved organizations, to show positive results with respect to technology and knowledge transfer activities.
The Flintbox® product was developed at and continues to be managed by UBC Research Enterprises, a wholly owned subsidiary of The University of British Columbia. Flintbox® currently has more than 60 contributing member organizations in Canada and the US; 20 of these organizations are members of WestLink.
WestLink has supported the development and implementation of Flintbox® since its inception. This support has come in two forms:
- Direct assistance to Flintbox® the company to help it grow and access expanded markets.
- Cost effective provision, installation, training and promotion of the Flintbox® website with all WestLink members.
WestLink, at no cost to Flintbox®, organized and assisted the company to beta test its first version of the product within WestLink member organizations in 2003. Based on the knowledge gained from this first critical market test, Flintbox®, now employing three people, has gone on to acquire new member clients coast-to-coast in Canada, parts of the US and most recently internationally. In return for its assistance, WestLink has become the exclusive distribution partner for Western Canada for the Flintbox® product. This allows WestLink to provide licensed group access at a considerable cost saving. Recently, through a WestLink collaboration with NSERC and ACCT Canada, a two-year support program has been launched that provides WestLink members (and 30 other institutions across Canada), with a no-cost subscription to Flintbox 2.0.
Flintbox® became fully operational in 2003. Since that time with the ongoing assistance of WestLink, it has rapidly become the premiere online application for the marketing and licensing of academic research and innovation in Canada. As of November 2007 the site boasts a series of significant outcomes:
Flintbox® Statistics as of November 2007
- 1,910,405 visitors
- 6,026 licenses issued. Canadian licenses in 2006 were 4,630 - an increase of nearly 2,000 licenses from 2005
- 772 research projects published. 350 of these projects have licenses associated with them
- 5,234 accounts created in commercial transactions
- $196,200 since inception in 2003
Flintbox® has been enthusiastically accepted and used to date by 20 WestLink members. Following is a short case study which demonstrates the breadth and value that this tool has delivered within Western Canada. Without the assistance and input of WestLink, these results may not have been realized, or at minimum, considerably delayed.
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