Episode 45 - Wyse Counsel: Reflections on venture and biobased economy with Roger Wyse
Release Date: 03/27/2025
Episode 63 – Notes on Innovation in Music with Peter Tregear
Tech Transfer Talk
This month it was a great pleasure to reconnect with , both school and college colleague, to explore the world of innovation and in turn technology transfer in music. This was a thoroughly engaging discussion for me, with my less than amateur music knowledge and skills being rekindled, and perhaps reimagined, as Peter took us from Sumer to synthesised music. It also took me back to some of our more profound discussions on and concepts of tech transfer with and respectively. Peter describes his journey into music as getting sucked into a whirlpool, having focused on science with some...
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Episode 62 - Building the Tech Transfer Club with Lisa Birrell and Greg Harper
Tech Transfer Talk
I had the opportunity to unpack the NorVic Foods ecosystem with Lisa Birrell (who was CEO) and Greg Harper (who drove the genesis of the initiative). With the ongoing conversations in Australia around innovation ecosystems (which we have had with John Howard), the need for better industry engagement (which we have had most recently with Jane Fitzpatrick) and the challenges of building regional ag innovation systems (discussed sometime back with Elena Kelavra), this presented as a coming together of these threads. We set the scene as to the idea behind NorVic Foods (which is an abbreviation of...
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Episode 61 - Tech Transfer, Innovation, and the Future of Chemicals with Victoria Meyer and The Chemical Show
Tech Transfer Talk
In our first joint podcast, I joined Victoria Meyer and The Chemical Show to explore technology transfer and innovation in the chemical industry. The chemical industry is where I got my start, with Dow Chemical and subsequently Akzo Nobel (now Nouryon), and I have maintained my deep interest in and passion for the sector over the years. The opportunity to continue this through the biobased economy, industrial and agricultural biotech, made for a really contrasting foundation to Victoria’s journey in petrochemicals at Shell, Amoco, Lyondell Basell and Clariant. I got asked a really...
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Episode 60 - An Analyst’s Perspective on Innovation Demand with Dennis Voznesenski
Tech Transfer Talk
I had the chance to catch up with , who hosts a regular . Dennis is an Agricultural Economist and author of and is a frequent commentator on Australian agricultural markets and dynamics. With a general sense in Australia that we struggle for demand side innovation, I felt a conversation with Dennis who is focussed on industry would make for an interesting set of perspectives. Dennis shared insights on the current challenges facing Australian farmers, particularly regarding rising costs of fuel and fertiliser due to global events. It was interesting that he framed the innovation opportunity...
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Episode 59 - The C is for more than Commercialisation with Jane Fitzpatrick
Tech Transfer Talk
I had the chance to follow up with on her powerful closing remarks at a panel session at the last year. Jane is CEO of the , and her organisation sits at the intersection of science, innovation, translation and market pull. Given the challenges we’ve been highlighting on the podcast around the industry pull, and the recent Strategic Examination of R&D (SERD) report, , it seemed a great time to build on her comments last year. We opened a little unusually, in that we started where we left off from (2025 National Innovation Policy Forum Review: Coordination and Translation) with ,...
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Episode 58 - Bringing Products to Market with Jarett Abramson
Tech Transfer Talk
I had the great pleasure of catching up with , who was 'between gigs' since his departure from and his imminent (and arguably eminent) commencement at in Europe. The journey started for Jarett with writing patents on cranberry juice extract and we explored how that path to market unfolded. In his private practice, he found himself working across a number of industry sectors, but fate kept bringing him back to the ag industry. When moving from the private firm to private sector (being initially Dow Pharma then , the latter now part of ), he reflected on the change in culture. Even at...
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Episode 57 - Science Meets Parliament 2026 - Science Meets the Economy: Opportunity and Risk with Jasmine Chambers and Steve Rodda
Tech Transfer Talk
In our annual podcast leading into Science Meets Parliament, we had the opportunity to discuss innovation, tech transfer and research translation with , President and , Pro-Vice Chancellor (Industry & Innovation) at . With STA building on their bench to boardroom initiatives with their new 'Science Meets the Economy' Program, Jas and Stephen shared their experiences and reflections with the Australian innovation system, and their respective journeys through research and translation. It was interesting to have Jas note that her early forays into translation were catalysed by frustration!...
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Episode 56 - Khaki is the New Green and Resilience is the New Carbon with Jim Lane
Tech Transfer Talk
In our first recorded abroad episode for 2026, I had the opportunity earlier this month to catch up in person with in Digestville, located in Key Biscayne, Florida. I hope that many of you recall that we catch up with Jim intermittently and since our last chat with him in November 2024, much has changed in the world of the biobased economy, and yet many themes remain the same! We firstly reflected on some major trends that are emerging, echoed in the title of this podcast. Jim observed how important the biobased economy is becoming in the corporate and national conversations...
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Episode 55 - 2025 National Innovation Policy Forum Review: Coordination and Translation with Jane O'Dwyer
Tech Transfer Talk
Following the (NIPF) in November 2025, I had the opportunity to reflect on the event with from (CRA) in mid-December. We started with the raison d’être of the NIPF to increase the linkages between industry, the innovation system and policymakers. To this end, as patrons of NIPF, and Catherine Livingstone have been catalysing the thinking over the past few years as the conversations and ambitions of NIPF evolved. The NIPF to date has moved from describing the problems to seeking how government and industry shape innovation policy and looking to ways to improve technology...
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Episode 54 - Innovation As Central to Sustainability, Not Just Productivity with Greg Harper
Tech Transfer Talk
In this episode, I had the opportunity to chat with , a longstanding colleague and friend, who has been on the tech transfer and commercialisation journey for many years. In this conversation Greg shares some of his experience and perspectives following his time at , as a board member at , senior leadership roles within the and, most recently, at . Greg shared some of his early journey into technology transfer from his post doc at the , and CSIRO, where he became involved in market orientated science, and the development and delivery of products to market, in a broad collaboration led...
info_outlineIn this episode, I had the great pleasure of catching up with Roger Wyse, Founder and Managing Partner at Spruce Capital Partners. I have had the pleasure of collaborating with Roger over the past decade (or more) and have always found his insights of great value and was delighted to have the chance to discuss his experiences and learnings.
Roger reflected on his early experiences at Burrill and the opportunities and challenges of being the first biobased economy venture fund. He then looked back on the early syndication efforts in building the fund and the journey to establishing Spruce Capital Partners in 2013. Spruce was seeking true disruptors, yet in bioeconomy, disruption is an oxymoron! Producers are conservative as they notionally have '40 shots on goal' (i.e. 40 growing seasons) and industrial biotech is conservative as consumer facing companies have brands to protect. We also reflected on the motivations and time horizons associated with different limited partners.
We discussed time associated with the market forming actions from regulators, such as sustainable aviation fuels (SAF) and market constraining actions from (same) regulators in securing approvals to construct processing plants or introducing technologies to market. Roger noted that in terms of time, society now has a 100-year environmental debt that we need to start to pay off!
It came to light that the technology transfer process from research institution to commercial partner in the US and Australian systems have eerie similarities! IP valuation disparities and divergent incentives amongst the parties can make alignment and deal finalisation time consuming. We speculated that this may in fact be the first of the 'valleys of death' that a licensee or venture might face!
Roger co-authored a discussion paper Building a Robust Bioeconomy: A Statement of Concern and Call to Action in October 2023, which explores the convergence of enabling technologies to accelerate the concept to commercialisation process. Reducing the time to market requires market, product and development processes to be undertaken in parallel, rather than the near linear fashion they are today. This requires patient capital alongside a systematic engagement across the stakeholders (or value pool participants). Roger also noted that there are process engineering expertise and infrastructure challenges to support scaleup and bridging product to market challenges.