The commercialization advocate: INVO’s Arjan Quist champions research and translation as a vital social good
The ultimate mission is to make inventions available to the public and we’re going to educate our inventors every step of the way about what’s necessary to bring science from the bench to a store near you.”
Arjan Quist
Executive Director of Innovation Management, INVO
With Northwestern University innovators disclosing some 250 inventions to INVO each year, Arjan Quist is a busy man.
Frequently an aspiring entrepreneur’s first point of contact with INVO, Quist provides an earnest, unfettered look at the commercialization journey ahead. He outlines the translational process and provides candid perspective on a long, often strenuous adventure – albeit one in which he and his INVO colleagues assist.
For many inventors, translation is an eye-opening odyssey. For Quist, it’s a personal mission.
The commercialization process first captivated Quist, a physicist and materials scientist by training, during his post-graduate work at the University of California, Santa Barbara, when he worked with the school’s tech transfer office on translating his own research. Seeing most research was funded by government capital, Quist began to view commercialization not as a distant byproduct of research, but rather an earnest responsibility to the taxpayers and society at large.
Embracing that mindset, Quist has devoted the last two decades of his professional life to promoting translation as a social good and helping inventors bring their science from the bench to the marketplace with an unrelenting spirit and resolute energy, which includes serving a mentor in the National Science Foundation’s Innovation Corps program.
After learning the ins and outs of business formation and commercialization pathways at a Chicago-based small business, Quist joined INVO in 2013. Initially an invention associate, he rose INVO’s ranks to become an invention manager, then senior director of invention management, largely handling project-based work with multiple Northwestern-based inventors.
In spring 2023, Quist was named INVO’s executive director of innovation management. He now guides a 13-member team charged to push Northwestern inventions to market, from executing the initial commercialization assessments and protecting intellectual property to filing patents and securing licensing deals.