UniServices chief eyes multinationals for growth

Peter Lee contemplates bringing in even more money by providing research and development for multinationals. File picture

Twelve months into his job at the helm of UniServices, Dr Peter Lee celebrates another year of record revenue for Auckland University's technology commercialisation arm and schemes to bring in even more money.

UniServices generated $71 million in 2005, up from $63 million in 2003, and Lee sees the potential for significant income growth by courting multinationals.

"These large companies are realising the innovation that's going to drive their business will not occur within their own laboratories but more and more of the R&D that's going to feed their new products, their brands and their new businesses is occurring outside of their companies," he says.

"They're inclined more and more to spend external R&D dollars and they will look to fund the very best."

This technology outsourcing means business opportunities for UniServices, which Lee says has grown to become the biggest organisation commercialising university research in Australasia.

"What they [multinationals] are looking for is an invigoration, a new perspective, a level of specialisation that perhaps they haven't achieved in their own company.

"They're much more flexible if they can use the world as their oyster."

Lee cites a deal with Procter and Gamble, struck last month, as an example of what can be achieved.

Auckland is one of only five universities in the world signed with the consumer goods and healthcare giant for a pilot project to identify joint commercial research opportunities.

"We invited P&G down, we showed them what we had, we suggested the relationships between what we're good at and what they needed and they were very pleased to participate."

Lee's contacts, cultivated during an international career in commercial research and development management, have helped open important doors.

Raised and educated in Auckland, he went to the United States in 1976 with a PhD in chemical and material engineering.

Between 1988 and 2003 he worked for International Paper, holding positions including global director of new product and process development and, from 1995, vice-president, global research and product development.

He returned to New Zealand in 2003 to head AgriGenesis Biosciences and joined UniServices as chief executive in January last year.

As well as selling the organisation's services to multinationals, Lee also wants to get more local investors onboard. He is keen to tap wealthy university alumni and others "who have an affinity with the university" and the funds to invest in early-stage technology development.

The scheme would mirror a model he is familiar with: selling options in a portfolio of technology projects.

"You'll fund them to a point in phases and you'll continually evaluate the developments and make subsequent investments based on their continued merit. It's a risk management process," he says.

"By managing the process that way you're able to weed out the weak ones early and feed the strong ones.

"It's that kind of investment profile that fits well in a University context - to harvest all of those concepts that are out there and start to develop them to the point where you can get some investors to come in and say that specific project, rather than the portfolio, is where I'd like to put my funds."

Lee says the university's record of successful developments - including BrainZ Instruments (now listed on the Australian Stock Exchange) and Proacta Therapeutics, a drug company showing promising trial results - should appeal to investors.

Peter Lee
* Who: Chief executive UniServices.
* Favourite gadget: A Logitech pen with camera attachment that records everything the user writes and then transfers it to their PC. "You're always looking for that scrap of paper [containing important notes]. Now it automatically goes into my computer so I can find it."
* Next big thing: Applying new low-impact chemistry techniques to previously energy intensive and environmentally damaging research.
* Alternative career: "I can't imagine having more fun than I'm experiencing right now."
* Spare time: "I cut trails through the undergrowth on a piece of land I have on Waiheke Island. It keeps me fit."
* Favourite sci-fi movie: "A genre of movies that make a powerful subwoofer sound really great. If I had to choose one it would be The Day After Tomorrow - that really gets the 5.1 digital going. That's more important to me than the plot sometimes."