I would like to use the occasion and respond to Günther’s remark on the phenomenon that everyone talks about technology transfer (“TT”), but still it is hard to find results.
Günther writes that actually TT is “NOT an issue – at least if one googles the term and looks at the results (…) surely there’s a lot of institutions promoting it, and the EC funds projects …”.
Being familiar with the EU policy and the focus of FP7 and other funding programmes, one could argue that public institutions really do promote technology transfer. I am sure technology transfer is indeed an issue. I guess the people actually DOING technology transfer only have a different understanding about it, they have different perspectives than the people TALKING about TT. Last, but not least, they do not publish their projects using terms of technology transfer etc.
So as Günther says it is probably just a matter of (non) marketing: “Universities are still very reluctant to publish about themselves, success stories are rare, and companies do not consider such news worth while publishing”. Anyway, marketing is not the only problem, there are of course always reasons and possibilities to improve things.
One crucial point could be the implementation of programmes and how abstract policy goals are broken down to practical frameworks for the “commun” project participant.
The EC is now asking for general feedback on ideas for simplifying the implementation of the EU RTD Framework Programmes.
Those who have general feedback on FP7 or e.g. think the FP7 programme is promoting technology transfer not enough or that promoting itself is not enough can now use this request to reply directly to the EC. For example there is the FP7 programme “research for the benefit of SMEs”, which is by the way open until December 3rd (and of course there is the CITT funding programme “Regions of Knowledge“). Considering that e.g. in Austria approx. 97% of all IT Companies are SMEs, I suppose that this is the ideal programme. But I wonder what participants of FP7 programmes might think about the effectiveness of these programmes in terms of research, TT etc …
Excellent point, Christoph. Especially companies do not use the term TT much and do not care which types of their cooperation with academia can be already called so and which do not fall in formal criteria.