University of Wisconsin Interim Chancellor David Ward told attendees at the monthly Wisconsin Innovation Network luncheon Tuesday at the Sheraton Hotel that a better process for commercializing discoveries was missing from the university.

Ward touted UW’s graduate program, the research park and WARF but lamented that people still fail to see success stories coming out of UW. Hence the need for D2P (Discovery to Product), a pilot program whose name also is its mission.

“(D2P) will be one-stop shopping for innovative entrepreneurship,” Ward said. “But it needs to be funded as large as the other three (of UW’s strengths) to be successful.”

Ward explained that when he was provost, UW was a “feudal system run by individual barrons.” That’s why D2P will provide a campus-wide system for getting products to market, Ward said.

D2P, which will be partially funded by WARF, is slated to begin this fall. Acting U.S. Commerce Secretary Rebecca Blank will succeed Ward this summer.