Commercializing biomedical discoveries is a challenging process for many reasons. However, Academic Medical Centers (AMC) that have teaching, patient care, research, and service engrained in their mission are well poised to host these discoveries. These academic discoveries can lead to improvement in patient health and economic development if supported to cross the \"valley of death\" through institutional assistance, by providing guidance, gap funding and product development expertise. Colorado has a vibrant local startup ecosystem, state support for commercialization and entrepreneurship as well as critical mass of product development expertise. University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, as a major AMC, is an engine for growth for the region. This article discusses innovation efforts at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus as a case study, which is built around two major efforts: the CCTSI and CU Innovations. I-Corps at CCTSI and the SPARK|REACH program of CU Innovations have been instrumental in fostering innovation, commercialization, and entrepreneurship on the campus.

Smallholders farming are responsible for a large proportion of Ethiopian food production. Sorghum is one of drought-tolerant crop which plays a crucial role in improving household food security level and source of income. However, there are different constraints which hinder the production and commercialization of cereal crops. Therefore, this study was aimed at identifying the determinants of sorghum producers\' commercialization in Kaffa, Sheka, and Bench Sheko Zones Southwest, Ethiopia. Data for the study were collected from both primary and secondary sources. The primary data were generated by a household survey using a pre-tested semi-structured questionnaire. Purposive and three-stage sampling techniques were used to draw 543 farmers. The data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and an econometric model. The Tobit model results indicated that sex of household head, educational level of household head, land under sorghum production, non/off-farm income, sorghum quantity produced, credit amount receive, and oxen were found to influences significantly the degree of commercialization. Policy implications drawn from the study findings include enhancing the productivity of land, strengthening supportive institutions and improving infrastructural facilities. Supporting female-headed households through different policy initiatives and interventions can improve their market participation decisions. Strengthening supportive institutions such as credit access and extension contact would motivate farm households to improve market participation.

This article synthesizes recent research by ICRISAT and its partners to analyse the business case for sorghum and millets in ESA and the wider strategy of commercialization on which this is based. The business case is stronger for sorghum because of its greater impact on poverty and food security, but millets are better suited to a strategy of commercialization. Commercial demand for millets is primarily driven by specialty markets for flour while that for sorghum is limited to beer. Demand for improved varieties is driven primarily by the need for early - maturity that shortens the hungry period. Future growth in production depends on increased opportunities for inter-regional trade.

The tissue culture banana (TCB) is a biotechnological agricultural innovation that has been adopted widely in commercial banana production. In 2003, Africa Harvest Biotech Foundation International (AH) initiated a TCB program that was explicitly developed for smallholder farmers in Kenya to help them adopt the TCB as a scalable agricultural business opportunity. At the heart of the challenge of encouraging more widespread adoption of the TCB is the question: what is the best way to introduce the TCB technology, and all its attendant practices and opportunities, to smallholder farmers. In essence, a challenge of community or stakeholder engagement (CE).
In this paper, we report the results of a case study of the CE strategies employed by AH to introduce TCB agricultural practices to small-hold farmers in Kenya, and their impact on the uptake of the TCB, and on the nature of the relationship between AH and the relevant community of farmers and other stakeholders. We identified six specific features of CE in the AH TCB project that were critical to its effectiveness: (1) adopting an empirical, \"evidence-based\" approach; (2) building on existing social networks; (3) facilitating farmer-to-farmer engagement; (4) focusing engagement on farmer groups; (5) strengthening relationships of trust through collaborative experiential learning; and (6) helping farmers to \"learn the marketing game\". We discuss the implications of AH\'s \"values-based\" approach to engagement, and how these guiding values functioned as \"design constraints\" for the key features of their CE strategy. And we highlight the importance of attention to the human dimensions of complex partnerships as a key determinant of successful CE.
Our findings suggest new ways of conceptualizing the relationship between CE and the design and delivery of new technologies for global health and global development.

The 1980s and 1990s saw a major expansion of biotechnology into new areas of science including genomics and recombinant technologies. This was coupled to the widespread emergence of academics into the commercial sector as they were encouraged to spin out companies or commercialize their intellectual property. There were many opportunities to raise investment, and extraordinary success stories were prominent across many areas of technology. The field of plant biotechnology for manufacturing recombinant pharmaceuticals (molecular pharming) emerged and was developed in this period. Like other biotechnologies, this was an exciting new development which offered some very obvious benefits and commercial advantages. In particularly, plant molecular pharming represented a highly novel and potentially disruptive manufacturing technology for recombinant proteins. Twenty-five years on, a series of interviews with senior members of sixteen of the most prominent companies involved in the field provides insight into the original drivers for commercialization, strategic thinking and planning behind key commercial decisions and an insider view into the major reasons for commercial success or failure. These observations and recurring themes identified across a number of commercial ventures remain relevant today, as new biotech companies continue to spin out of the world of academia.