I’d like to about hear your experiences with technology transfer. I’m addressing this request to the nowEurope contributors circle, many of whom I have only recently met. My experience has mainly been with small, entrepreneurial startups in Internet media.
However, I do recall that some fifteen years ago when I used a text interface to navigate the Internet through the Siemens Data-P network I discovered a Hungarian professor who had a working copy of Mosiac, the first primitive web browser. His student later told me the professor had refused to post a copy of Mosiac on the open university for others to use.
Back then the power was in hording information. Today, the power is in helping information move efficiently to the right place.
I realize that many things have changed in fifteen years, and yet my experience is that human habits of thinking are the most difficult to change. I regularly meet talented, well educated graduates of Hungarian’s academic institutions. However, the only innovations I see are those emerging from the private sector.
I confess, I am a technology transfer newbie. I understand the basic concepts and I’m learning the jargon. I’m finding my way around, but I don’t have first-hand experience with technology transfer. How does it work?
I’ve been doing my homework and what I can see far is that technology transfer isn’t working very well in Europe yet. In April, the European Commission “relaunched” the European Research Area (ERA). Only last month the Commission announced the “Ljubljana Process” which they hope will lead to better exploitation of Europe’s research potential and the creation of a genuine European Research Area (ERA).
Euractive has a full page announcement about the Ljubljana Process.
Here’s a full page on Euractive describing recent developments in technology transfer.
So far all of this just is theory to me. I would enjoy hearing real-life experiences of how this is working or, at least what is being done to fill in the gaps.
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Steve, you don’t need to feel a newbie in the tech transfer field. You certainly have more experience than many of those theoretics talking the TT hype for years. It’s really nothing much else than bringing R&D to marketable innovations. It can be done within a large corporation or a university, for example through spin-offs.
And you are right we don’t have many successful stories in this region or in Europe as a whole. Why this is so? Several reasons can be found in the Innovation Manifesto, see http://www.sciencebusiness.net/pdf/Innovation_Manifesto.pdf, published by Science|Business about 18 months ago. My short summary in Czech is available at http://www.park.cz/inovacni_manifest_bez_zbytecnych_reci
Steven, I invite you to check out Technology Transfer Tactics, a monthly newsletter filled with success strategies, case studies, and how-to articles. You can get info at http://www.technologytransfertactics.com, and also sign up for our free weekly e-zine there, which also includes good info.
Good luck!
David Schwartz
Thanks, David, that does look interesting. I signed up for the free newsletter to start with. If it’s useful I will likely post about it here on nowEurope.
Let’s take a look at what are the conditions for efficient technology transfer in Europe. Industry, research and EU institutions gathered on Wednesday at a conference on Innovating for competitiveness in ICT. http://www.euractiv.com/en/science/eu-search-technology-transfer-area/article-172791
It mentions several topics for our discussion here - intellectual property management, mobility of researchers, conditions for the creation of spin-off companies, the role of national standards and regulations, increased industry-academia collaboration, the European Institute for Innovation and Technology (EIT) and the working conditions of scientists.