- Women are making significant contributions to South African science, but many discoveries never reach the innovation economy.
- Commercialisation requires support that goes beyond patents, including funding, market validation and industry partnerships.
- South Africa must enable more women researchers to transform intellectual property into products, enterprises and practical solutions.
Every Women’s Month, we rightly celebrate the growing contribution of women to science and research. But recognition and representation are only part of the story.
If South Africa wants to build a strong and sustainable innovation economy, we also need to ask what happens after women enter laboratories, lead research groups and produce new knowledge.
Are their discoveries protected? Are they connected to industry? Can they access commercialisation support, funding and markets? Do they have opportunities to turn intellectual property into products, services and enterprises?
These are important questions because excellent research does not automatically translate into innovation. Between a scientific discovery and a product that improves lives lies a complicated and often difficult journey involving intellectual property, funding, market validation, regulation, technology development, industry engagement and commercial networks.
In research and innovation management, this is where we often see promising ideas stall. The researcher may have produced excellent science. The technology may work. The potential social or economic value may be clear. But without the right support system, that work can remain confined to a publication, a laboratory or a patent that is never taken further.
South Africa cannot afford that. Our research system operates in a country facing substantial challenges, including unemployment, food insecurity, disease, climate pressures and slow economic growth. At the same time, we need to strengthen our capacity to develop new technologies, businesses and industries.
That makes the effective use of our research talent a national imperative. Women researchers are already contributing significantly to this effort. The next challenge is to ensure that they are able to participate fully not only in knowledge creation, but in the innovation economy that can emerge from it.
Rethinking what research success looks like
This requires us to think more broadly about what research success looks like. Academic publications and citations remain essential measures of scholarly excellence, but they cannot be the only measures of impact. A discovery can also create value when it becomes a licensed technology, informs a new product, attracts an industry partner, establishes a spin-off company or provides a practical solution to a social problem.
We have compelling examples of what this can look like. At the University of Pretoria, Professor Namrita Lall’s research into indigenous medicinal plants has generated more than 40 patents and over 30 prototypes and commercialised products. Her work has also contributed to spin-off pharmaceutical and skincare companies and has demonstrated how scientific research can create economic opportunities while drawing value from indigenous knowledge systems.
Professor Lise Korsten’s research in food safety, plant health and reducing food losses has similarly moved beyond academic publication into practical application and industry partnership. This includes technology based on Trichoderma soil fungi that was licensed to BASF.
These examples matter not because they are exceptional women who somehow overcame the system, but because they illustrate what becomes possible when excellent science is connected to mechanisms that can move it towards application. That connection does not happen by accident.
Beyond patents to practical impact
Researchers need access to expertise that can help them identify and protect intellectual property, evaluate whether a technology has commercial potential, understand competing technologies and markets, find appropriate funding and connect with industry partners.
Technology transfer offices and research and innovation management professionals therefore have a role that extends far beyond filing patents. A patent is not an innovation simply because it exists. If nobody develops it, licenses it, invests in it or adopts it, its potential impact may never be realised.
That is why commercialisation support needs to include market validation, technology landscaping, competitor analysis, industry engagement and the development of partnerships capable of carrying an idea beyond the research environment. These are among the functions that research and innovation support structures provide to researchers seeking to move their work into real-world application.
The missing conversation about women and innovation
The gender dimension of this deserves greater attention. Much of the conversation about women in science has understandably focused on encouraging girls into STEM subjects, improving the representation of women in research and addressing barriers to career progression.
Those remain important priorities. However, we should also be asking what happens further along the research and innovation pipeline. Who gets introduced to commercial partners? Who participates in entrepreneurial networks? Whose technologies attract investment? Who receives the support needed to build a spin-off company? Who is encouraged to think of their research as something that could become intellectual property, a licence, a product or a new venture?
If we focus only on participation in science and neglect participation in innovation, we risk solving only half the problem. The objective should not be to push every researcher towards commercialisation. Much valuable research will never become a product, nor should it.
But where research does have the potential for wider application, researchers should have a fair opportunity to pursue that path.
A better measure of progress
This is particularly important for South Africa because innovation is ultimately about much more than commercial return.
A successful innovation ecosystem can strengthen industries, create enterprises, support jobs, improve public services and turn locally generated knowledge into solutions designed for local and global challenges.
Women therefore need to be seen not simply as beneficiaries of transformation in science, but as producers of intellectual property, technology, enterprises and economic value. As we mark Women’s Month, that may be the more useful measure of progress.
We should certainly ask how many women are entering science and how many are progressing into senior research positions. But we should also ask how many are leading innovation programmes, developing technologies, securing patents, establishing enterprises, licensing intellectual property and forming the partnerships that enable research to reach society.
South Africa has invested substantially in building its scientific capability. We cannot afford to leave valuable knowledge stranded between discovery and application, particularly when that knowledge could help address some of our most urgent challenges.
Women are already producing the science. Our responsibility now is to ensure that the research and innovation system gives their ideas every opportunity to travel further.
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The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the University of Pretoria or Conviction.co.za
