Science-to-business marketing (S2B marketing) entails the marketing of research conducted at research institutions, particularly universities, to industry or other interested parties. The acronym S2B follows a series of marketing acronyms used to shorten and popularise marketing specialisations, including (B2C) (business-to-consumer marketing) and (B2B) (business-to-business marketing).
 Science-to-Business (S2B) Marketing aims at the use of marketing principles for the area of science, supporting the successful commercialisation of research competencies, capacities and results from a research institution to its research customers. The objective thereby is to develop, test and provide new models, instruments and proceedings for research commercialisation that enable universities and research institutions to market their research more effectively. The approach uses existing instruments from Business to Business Marketing, Service Marketing and Technology & Innovation Marketing.
 The special feature of S2B Marketing is the determination of the market, in particular, industry, as the starting point for all research activities. S2B is generally focused on technology-intensive departments but can also be applied in all disciplines of research. The industry engaged in research and development is identified as the key target market. This leads to research customers, who are willing to pay for scientific research, being the centre of consideration.
 Today's marketplace is characterised by increased competition, rapid change and a shift towards knowledge-based economies. This development is fostered by factors such as rapid technological developments, globalisation and the maturing of domestic markets. With innovation enabling an economy's success under these conditions, research has become a key driver in economic performance. An extensive outsourcing of research to specialised institutions such as universities has resulted in an increased number of linkages between industry entities and universities. These relationships and commercialisation projects provide a great potential to foster innovation, leading to a need to pay particular attention to the management of technology commercialisation processes.
 In the last decade, both private organisations as well as public institutions have increased their combined efforts to foster the transfer of knowledge, in order to respond to the rapid change in their competitive landscapes and the worldwide speed of innovation. Especially, the great significance of innovation is regarded as the catalyst for an extended orientation towards University-Industry-Relationships. Taken into consideration the global tendency towards a decrease in public research funding, the commercialisation of scientific research is one of the most critical challenges for innovative research and development. For the purpose of establishing efficient collaborations between industrial and entrepreneurial partners, researchers are required to incorporate the service dimension of their scientific work more strongly. S2B Marketing thereby helps to successfully commercialise research and strengthens the linkage between research organisations and industry.
 Essentially there are two main actors in the commercialisation process: research institutions and industry or government departments interested in purchasing research outcomes or capabilities.
 1. Research organisations build closer links with industry in order to:
 2. Industry engages research institutions for a number of reasons:
 3. Furthermore, society benefits from the cooperation between research and industry in a number of ways:
 Extracting value in the form of research-based technologies and innovations from the university and research organisations is a challenge faced by technology transfer offices, regional development agencies and Governments, and, of course, by Universities and business organisations the world over. Despite the illustrated prominence of technology commercialisation and university-industry links, little research and few suitable approaches exist. In fact, the challenge is not a lack of technology offers or entrepreneurs / capitalists / companies (from here referred to as the 'partners of technology transfer') with needs to receive the technology, but it is the transfer and partnering process itself that requires most attention.
 Differing priorities between research institutions and industry and/or entrepreneurs have been cited as a reason for this. For instance, research institutions are, contrary to result- / market-oriented businesses, more process-oriented and primary focused on new knowledge. These different types of research objectives, coupled with differences in organisational cultures relate to different behaviour exhibited by researchers and business people. This, in turn, has a significant impact on the creation of partnerships and a successful transfer of technologies. These issues have proven to be very complex, with a deep-rooted misunderstanding between the two not being sufficiently and adequately addressed. Therefore, a strategic marketing approach is needed in order to assess and extract entrepreneurial value from University research most effectively.
 However, a large number of these linkages fail, and a recent study on information and communication technology industries showed organisations to perceive research institutes and cooperative research centres as the least important source of information, knowledge and skills. Despite their importance and frequent failures, however, research on university–industry relationships (UIR) and the factors influencing their fate, especially from a marketing perspective, remains sparse. However, there is a growing research understanding in the area of Science-to-Business marketing.