Larry Page, a Ph.D. candidate at Stanford University in the United States, proposed to sell his search algorithm "PageRank," developed as part of his doctoral research, for $1 million (approximately 1.38 billion won) to various portals but was rejected. He eventually took a leave of absence from graduate school and founded the company himself, leaving the patent with the university.
Later, as that company grew into the global giant Google, the shares the university received as licensing fees became research funding worth $336 million (approximately 463.1 billion won) in 2005. The researcher became an entrepreneur, the university secured research funds, and the market enjoyed innovation. This is a typical example of the virtuous cycle created by laboratory startups.
Such scenes are not unfamiliar to us either. In 1989, when a Ph.D. was essentially a ticket to becoming a professor, Byun Dae-gyu, a Seoul National University Ph.D., co-founded a company with colleagues and achieved sales of 1 trillion won for "Hyumax." In 1997, Kim Young-dal, a KIST graduate student, established the world-renowned digital video storage device company "IDIS."
In the 2000s, professors also joined the venture fever. "MacroGen" of Seoul National University Seo Jeong-seon (Prof.) became the first bio-venture to list on KOSDAQ, and "GeneXen" of POSTECH Seong Yeong-cheol (Prof.) once exceeded a market capitalization of 2 trillion won.
In the 2010s, the main actors of innovation returned to graduate students. "Rainbow Robotics," founded by alumni of the KAIST humanoid research lab, welcomed Samsung Electronics as its largest shareholder, and LiDAR and brain imaging AI (artificial intelligence) startups from Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology (GIST) also completed their journey to KOSDAQ listing.
From an era when even the term "startup support" was unfamiliar, master's and doctoral students in laboratories stepped out of their labs and walked toward the market on their own. However, looking back coldly, their achievements are closer to exceptional results created by individual extraordinary decisions rather than a systematic system.
This year, South Korea's national R&D (research and development) budget stands at 35.5 trillion won, placing it among the world's highest relative to GDP (gross domestic product), and the number of papers and patents is enormous. On the other hand, according to a June analysis by the Bank of Korea, only 26% of the new technologies newly secured by universities were actually transferred, falling far short of the United States and the United Kingdom.
The proportion of transferred technologies that led to sales was only 19.2% as of 2023. In other words, out of every 100 university technologies, only about five are sold in the market. While half of the top 10 U.S. companies by market capitalization have roots in universities, none of South Korea's top 30 companies do. There are many paper authors, but there is a lack of people who can move technology to the market and systems to nurture them.
The United States was the first country to identify this bottleneck at the national level. The U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) diagnosed the root cause not as "insufficient research funding" but as a "knowledge gap" required to turn basic research into business. As a solution, it introduced practical startup education where researchers go outside the lab and directly interview over 100 potential customers.
To date, over 3,000 teams have undergone this training, and 52% of them led to actual startups, attracting follow-on investments exceeding $7 billion (approximately 966 billion won). In particular, more than half of the participating team leaders were graduate students. This national experiment proved that the ability to read the market is not an innate sense but a "skill learned through training."
The prescription is clear. If the cause of the bottleneck is a "knowledge gap," the prescription must be "education." We must significantly strengthen practical startup education for master's and doctoral students, who account for about 30% of all university students beyond undergraduate startup education. We must nurture researchers with the "push" to turn technology into business and a healthy wildness (instinct) to read market possibilities.
The battleground for innovation ultimately lies in the classroom and the market. IDIS Kim Yeong-dal (Chairman), which gained its entrepreneurial dream in Silicon Valley 30 years ago, has established buildings there and is creating a global startup campus together with its alma mater. This is a virtuous cycle where senior experiences lead to junior challenges.
Technology being born in the laboratory is entirely the researcher's responsibility. However, ensuring that technology does not sleep on papers but walks out into the vast market is entirely our education's responsibility.
[MoneyToday Startup Media Platform Unicorn Factory]
in OPINION
