Scaling up impact of social science research through commercialisation 

By Professor Pablo Munoz, November 2024

Research intensive universities are undergoing important transformations. The landscape is changing rapidly. Uncertainty around student numbers, funding and performance expectations continue to affect universities as we move from one REF to the next.  

In this context, commercialisation is growing in importance, as it’s seen as a financially sustainable mechanism for transferring knowledge from universities to the private sector. While commercialisation mechanisms are well-established across STEM, relying mostly on IP protection, processes and practices are less clear when it comes to social science-based spin-outs.  

Universities and knowledge transfer teams face difficulties in fostering business venturing and creating spin-offs from social science research, despite offering a promising pathway to scale up research impact. Still today, universities struggle to leverage its uniqueness and embed business development early into the research process. For social scientists, commercialisation is an ugly word, and engagement is rare after “the paper is published”. Practitioners rarely see the practical value of papers, and investors struggle to identify and assess scalable social science knowledge, particularly during early stages of development. 

To tackle these issues, at the Durham Enterprise Centre, we created the Social Science Enterprise Lab. Our work at the Lab is grounded in a decade of research into futures, problematisation and design in the social sciences. We’ve developed a model and facilitation intelligence that leverage the generative power of social science knowledge and motivation behind social venturing. This requires a move to focusing on practical problems, co-creation and research interventions, which involves a consideration of use-inspired research that advances our fundamental understanding of human life. Such a move doesn’t see trade-offs between the pursuit of fundamental knowledge and practical applications. It rather embraces both simultaneously, treating them as complements, not as substitutes where one necessarily drives out the other. 

At the core of The Social Science Enterprise Lab is a ten-month research incubation programme that brings researchers and SME founders together to co-develop research-based solutions to practical challenges. Projects in the Lab can originate from a theoretical inquiry or emerge from a societal need. In every project, we aim to create new, practical, and scalable solutions that are deeply grounded in solid theoretical backgrounds.  

Over the ten months, these teams will receive training, conduct joint problematisation, engage in research activities, explore solutions through prospection, explore markets for research solutions, and engage in commercialisation activities. For the duration of the programme, participating SME founders become Entrepreneurs-in-Residence at the Business School. Through our programme, we’re able to align the pursuit of theoretical novelty with the future aspirations of practitioners, and as a result empowering teams to use their knowledge and experiences to envision the future and develop solutions that not only fill theoretical gaps but also address societal needs. At the end of the programme, we aim to develop scalable research intervention/solutions and clear pathways to bring them to the market.  

The Social Science Enterprise Lab is funded by the School’s Smart & Scale Up initiative, an interdisciplinary, impact-driven research programme focused on innovation and business development of SMEs in the North East of England. We’re currently supporting four research-practice projects from across social science departments that are distinctively developing solutions to thorny challenges: to support neurodiverse young adults in their journeys to self-employment; scale up the impact of contextual safeguarding for children; facilitate access to impact measurement tools for social enterprises; and support careers in a thriving North-East creative industry. Over the next two years (2024-2026), the Lab will support a further six social science research project teams and continue to develop new methods and tools to assist transformative social science research. This includes translational social science (the equivalent to clinical trials in biomed), tools for investors, and a suite of training programmes for researchers and technology transfer officers. 

The Lab is transforming social science research by expanding its impact beyond traditional research practices and outputs. Our method and toolkit give researchers a way to bring research impact and business prospection together and early into the core of the research process. It therefore breaks the barrier between publication and commercialisation, which are no longer treated as incompatible activities. We offer knowledge transfer officers a method and language to open new opportunity spaces for social science research, scale up impact, and achieve their commercialisation aims. External stakeholders interested in science-based spin-offs (incubators, investors, development agencies) can engage with social scientists early in the research process and better assess the transformative potential of their work. 

In 2025, the Lab will go global and start supporting other universities interested in scaling up the impact of social science research through commercialisation. 

If you’re interested in the work we are doing at the Lab or have ideas for future projects that could benefit from our support, please contact us at: durham.ac.uk/ssel. Ideas from researchers and SME founders are welcomed.