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 Last, but not least, they do not publish their projects using terms of technology transfer etc.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. Continue reading ‘Technology Transfer and FP7′
