Background
The National R&D Commercialisation Program or Malaysia Commercialisation Year (MCY 2016) is a program to accelerate commercialization of Research, Development and Innovation (R,D&I) output from universities, institutions, and local research agencies, thereby generating wealth. MCY 2016 was also initaited as a platform to increase the awareness of stakeholders and citizens about the importance and potential of innovation and commercialisation in increasing our national income.
To support R,D,&I activities, the Government has provided funds for each phase of R&D and Commercialisation (R,D&C) in the national commercialisation ecosystem. In addition to funding support, the Government also provides various physical facilities and advisory services such as incubation centers, R,D&C infrastructures, marketing assistance and technology audits by various Government agencies.
In general, the implementation of R&D needs to go through five (5) stages of implementation, namely idea/concept; theory/fundamentals; prototype/proof of concept; pre-commercialisation; and commercialisation. R,D&I commercialisation is a complex and challenging process especially between the pre-commercialisation and commercialisation phases due to factors such as financial constraint, competition with existing products, quality perception and acceptance by users, regulatory compliance, intellectual property rights disputes and etc. Most R&D products face difficulty to pass the interim phase known as the “valley of death”. Thus, the spirit of MCY initiative is to increase the effectiveness of commercialisation efforts through the synergistic cooperation of various stakeholders