In the academic world, 'valorization' is often thought of as startups, patents, and licensing. Many institutions focus heavily on these areas. However, the true potential lies in understanding that impact can take many shapes and forms. Valorization isn’t only about commercialization. It’s about ensuring that knowledge finds its way into society where it can do the most good, whether through products, policies, practices, or public engagement.

In my work with researchers, technology transfer offices (TTOs) and other research support offices, I've seen how differently “valorization” is interpreted across roles. These gaps in understanding aren’t just semantic. They can lead to missed opportunities and siloed efforts. When we don’t share a clear, inclusive view of what impact looks like, promising ideas can stall before they ever reach the people who need them.

Commercialization: The Dominant Form of Valorization

Commercialization is a vital and often visible path to impact. It provides a structured, scalable way to translate research into products and services that address real-world needs. That’s why it frequently takes center stage: it aligns innovation with deployment and economic growth.

But an overemphasis on commercialization can send an unintended message: if your research doesn’t lead to a marketable product, it’s somehow less valuable. This can discourage researchers whose work isn’t easily commercializable, or who are uneasy about aligning their work with profit-driven models. In these cases, the focus on commercialization can narrow the pathways for innovation.

The truth is, an innovation that improves lives through non-commercial channels is still impactful. It is certainly better than one that never leaves the lab because it doesn’t “fit the mold.”

The Other Paths to Value

Commercialization isn’t the only way research creates impact. Across disciplines, we see knowledge shaping the world through a variety of routes. While some are direct, and others are subtle, all are legitimate and meaningful. The paths below illustrate how research can deliver value beyond the marketplace.

Citizen Participation: Inspiring Public Involvement

Research doesn’t always have to be done for society. It can also be done with society. Involving citizens directly in the research process, whether through co-design, community-based research, or citizen science, creates knowledge that is more relevant, trusted, and grounded in real-world needs [1].

This kind of engagement is especially powerful in fields like public health, environmental science, and social policy, where lived experience is critical to designing effective solutions. For example, a community-led air quality monitoring project can generate both valuable data and stronger public advocacy.

Supporting citizen participation means embracing research that builds trust, fosters collaboration, and empowers communities, not just outcomes that fit traditional commercialization or policy pathways. It’s about valuing the process of engagement as much as the results.

Policy and Public Sector Influence: Shaping Decisions that Matter

Not all research leads to products, but much of it shapes how decisions are made at the local, national, or global level [2]. This pathway is especially common in fields like economics, law, social sciences, public health, and environmental studies.

When researchers inform public policy, the outcomes can be as impactful as any commercial innovation. Think of a public health expert whose data shapes vaccination guidelines, or a political scientist contributing to electoral reform. These contributions may not generate revenue, but they influence systems, improve lives, and help align research with societal priorities.

The process of translating research into policy often involves intermediary organizations and translation layers, such as think tanks, policy institutes, and advisory bodies. These entities play a crucial role in bridging the gap between academic research and practical policy-making by synthesizing research findings, facilitating dialogue between researchers and policymakers, and providing actionable recommendations.

Recognizing and supporting this type of impact means fostering research that enhances public value, even when it doesn’t follow a commercial route. For example, policy makers can create incentives for researchers to engage with public sector initiatives, while TTOs can host workshops on how to translate research into policy recommendations.

Open Science Infrastructure: Building Tools for Collective Progress

Sometimes, the most impactful research isn’t a product or a policy, but a tool or system that enables others to build upon it. Open datasets, shared protocols, reusable code, and collaborative platforms have a multiplier effect, accelerating progress across entire fields [3].

For instance, a bioinformatician who releases a well-documented dataset can fuel dozens of research projects. Similarly, a researcher who publishes reproducible code or open benchmarks raises the bar for the entire community, ensuring that future work is more reliable, transparent, and efficient.

However, it's important to approach openness with care. Releasing tools or datasets before they're fully validated can lead to errors or confusion, potentially undermining trust or causing setbacks in related research. So, while open knowledge infrastructure has immense value [4], it must be done thoughtfully, ensuring that the resources shared are robust, reliable, and truly ready for widespread use.

Supporting open knowledge infrastructure means investing in the foundation that empowers continuous innovation while also fostering an environment where quality and transparency go hand in hand.

Cultural and Educational Outreach: Engaging the Public and Shaping Minds

Not all impact stems from technical innovations. Sometimes, it’s about helping people engage with ideas in new, meaningful ways. Humanities and arts researchers, in particular, make invaluable contributions through public storytelling, exhibits, media, and curriculum development [5].

For example, a historian collaborating with a local museum to co-produce a podcast series can deepen public understanding of history. Or a linguist working with schools to shape language policies has the potential to influence generations of students. These are tangible outcomes that change how people think, learn, and experience the world.

Supporting cultural and educational outreach means recognizing that impact goes beyond patents and products—it’s about fostering an informed and engaged society.

Practice-Based Integration: Translating Research into Real-World Action

Some of the most powerful impact happens when research directly influences how people work, teach, and serve others in the field. This is the type of impact seen in hospitals [6], classrooms, non-profits, and engineering teams, where research leads to practical, on-the-ground change.

For example, a nursing researcher might develop a new triage protocol that improves patient care in emergency settings. An engineer’s sustainable design could become a key part of low-cost housing initiatives. Or a psychologist’s new intervention method could be integrated into school counseling programs, changing how mental health support is provided to students.

Recognizing practice-based integration means valuing research that transforms real-world practices, improving systems and services in tangible ways.

Bridging the Gap Between Researchers and Support Offices

The research support offices I’ve spoken with, particularly TTOs, are deeply committed to enabling all forms of impact. Yet, many researchers still lack a clear understanding of what these offices do, especially when it comes to valorization. To bridge this gap, TTOs often rely on outreach efforts like events, newsletters, and internal publications. While helpful, these methods depend on researchers taking the initiative, which doesn’t always happen.

Many TTOs already engage in proactive scouting through internal funding rounds, invention disclosures, and embedded liaisons. Building on these efforts, further enhancing direct engagement with researchers can make impact opportunities even harder to overlook. The challenge, however, is that manual scouting is time-consuming and resource-intensive.

On the flip side, researchers are experts in their fields but often haven’t been exposed to the full range of support available to help translate their work into real-world impact. Meanwhile, support offices, already stretched thin by limited budgets and growing responsibilities, struggle to balance the demands of scouting with the day-to-day tasks of guiding projects through the tech transfer pipeline.

Eunovus is dedicated to helping TTOs overcome these challenges by streamlining tech transfer processes and automating key parts of the scouting workflow. Our vision is to enable continuous, real-time scouting, ensuring that high-potential research is identified and supported as soon as opportunities emerge. This proactive approach would allow TTOs to engage with promising innovations more quickly and effectively, leading to greater success in valorizing research.

Looking Ahead

For researchers, ask yourself: What kind of impact is your work already having, commercial or otherwise? Are you following through on the broader impact goals you outlined in your grant proposals?

For those in support roles (tech transfer, research development, or strategy): How clearly are you signaling the kinds of impact your institution values? And when researchers engage with your services, does their experience reinforce this message?

In upcoming posts, I’ll explore how to spot early signs of these broader impact paths and how institutions can support them without introducing unnecessary friction. Stay tuned for actionable insights on how to support these valorization paths without adding unnecessary friction.

Citations:

1. L. G. Rosas, P. R. Espinosa, F. M. Jimenez, and A. C. King, “The Role of Citizen Science in Promoting Health Equity,” Annual Review of Public Health, vol. 43, no. 1, Nov. 2021, doi: https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-publhealth-090419-102856.
2. P. Dorta-González, A. Rodríguez-Caro, and D.-G. M. Isabel, “Societal and scientific impact of policy research: A large-scale empirical study of some explanatory factors using Altmetric and Overton,” Journal of informetrics, vol. 18, no. 3, pp. 101530–101530, Aug. 2024, doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.joi.2024.101530.
3. G. Colavizza et al., “An analysis of the effects of sharing research data, code, and preprints on citations,” arXiv.org, 2024. https://arxiv.org/abs/2404.16171
4. B. Fecher and S. Friesike, “Open Science: One Term, Five Schools of Thought,” Opening Science, pp. 17–47, Dec. 2013, doi: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-00026-8_2.
5. E. Perignat and J. Katz-Buonincontro, “STEAM in practice and research: An integrative literature review,” Thinking Skills and Creativity, vol. 31, pp. 31–43, Mar. 2019, doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tsc.2018.10.002.
6. J. C. F. van Oijen, A. van Dongen-Leunis, J. Postma, T. van Leeuwen, and R. Bal, “Achieving research impact in medical research through collaboration across organizational boundaries: Insights from a mixed methods study in the Netherlands,” Health research policy and systems, vol. 22, no. 1, p. 72, Jun. 2024, doi: https://doi.org/10.1186/s12961-024-01157-z.