Loans & Finances Today

Leaving aside the question of whether spinouts are the optimum way in which to commercialise research (compared with licencing, for example), it appears that more analysis need to be undertaken to determine why spinouts are not as successful as they could be, particularly in realising profit for their investors through successful exits. Furthermore, there could be closer consideration by universities of the following questions:

Should there be a more rigorous approach to establishing exit planning strategies when spinouts prepare their business plans at start-up? Should there be more extensive training of academics intending to commercialise their research in business management and practice, the raising of finance, investor relations, IP protection, marketing and exit planning?

How can the quality of management and staff in university technology transfer offices be improved? Also, perhaps those UK universities with a less than successful history with spinouts and those coming into the spinout business for the first time could follow more closely the approach of Oxford and Cambridge Universities, as well as the template established by the successful American academic institutions.

Currently, farmland is of interest because the returns are not correlated to the returns on U.S. stocks. Watch for overconfidence. Lack of correlation with U.S. stocks is only a good thing if returns are at least as high as inflation.

Many speculators currently believe that farmland, crops, and livestock are about to turn up for a sustained period. They argue that farmland is disappearing at a rate of a million acres a year as the cities and population grow. Demand will increase and supply will dwindle. However, other speculators are selling out. They believe that supply will grow faster than demand as agricultural technology improves and cheap imports flood the market.

They also see farm profits being squeezed. On one side, high-tech seeds are becoming more expensive, energy costs are rising, and fertilizers are more expensive. On the other side, processors and consumers pay lower prices and a fluctuating dollar hurts overseas sales.

No one knows for sure how this speculation will work out. That is why it is a speculation. Historically, overconfident speculators have lost on farms.