Differences between Privatization Commercialization

Privatisation generally refers to the process where businesses or assets which were formerly owned by the people (i.e. the government) are sold to private individuals or corporations to be run as (possibly) profit-making enterprises. A typical example of this would be breaking up a country's telephone monopoly into parts, and selling the parts to interested businesses.

Commercialization generally refers to taking the product of research (whether private or public is immaterial) and building a business out of that idea. Usually, the term "commercialization" is used when taking a research idea and building a business around that idea. Taking a research result and making a product to sell is usually referred to as "productization". For instance, if research in psychology showed that hypnosis with a watch could produce weight loss, then creating a chain of walk-in hypno-theropy stores would be Commercialization, while selling a box with a pamphlet and watch in it would be Productization. The difference is a bit subtle, and may overlap.