This keeps its efforts focused on producing results but prevents a particular company from dominating. One of the ground rules for funding is that research projects must involve collaboration between at least two member universities, which keeps any one institution from dominating. There are also ground rules about the sharing of intellectual property rights for any discoveries that may result. Opportunities exist for exclusive arrangements between individual universities and corporations to do particular applications of research, but these occur within a larger context. The Georgia Research Alliance also addresses the commercialization end of the process.
Few researchers are business people.
That is just a fact of life. And without technology-transfer assistance, a lot of useful discoveries simply would not make it to market. Within a few years of its creation, the alliance participated in creating a local venture capital firm. This firm, together with a few other venture capital operations in the region, started the ball rolling by investing in early-stage ventures based on alliance discoveries. These early efforts helped Georgia attract venture capital from outside sources.