EUROPE: Forum calls for easier technology transfer

Europe must get serious about technology transfer. This was one of the conclusions of From the lab to the market, a special programme looking for ways to bridge the gap between industry and academia at the EuroScience Open Forum in Barcelona from 18 to 22 July (www.esof2008.org). Researchers, heads of university technology transfer offices and R&D managers from industry discussed what changes universities needed to make to ease the pathway from the laboratory to the marketplace.

Universities must become more autonomous and be allowed to build up endowments which will allow them to set their own investment priorities, according to Carl Johan Sundberg of Sweden's Karolinska Institute's Unit for Bioentrepreneurship.

"We must get them out of the grip of governments which have never been very generous with funding," Sundberg said. Universities must also own their own inventions, even to the point where individual scientists can hold the rights to their own discoveries as is currently the case in Sweden, he added.

The need for stronger, more professional technology transfer offices at universities was a recurring theme. Both speakers and members of the audience agreed it was vital to get the right people working in TTOs.

Alfonse Sauquet, Dean of ESADE Business School in Barcelona, said this could be someone "who has gone past the peak of scientific production and who has years of experience to offer".

Pat Frain, Director of University College Dublin's innovation and technology transfer centre in Ireland, called for tighter professional standards for the people working in TTOs.

Frain said ProTon Europe, the European association of TTOs, only accepted people with more than five years' experience of technology transfer as members. He also believes training on technology transfer should be provided to more researchers and to other sectors outside academia.

"Very few people will actually run TTOs but all scientists need to be able to identify possible projects," he said, adding that his organisation now offered modules on innovation and technology transfer as part of PhD programmes at the college.

TTOs and university managers must be realistic about timeframes, said Frain. A study of revenue generated by technology transfer at the University of California produced some telling results: in 2002, 90% related to inventions that were disclosed before 1990. "It takes a long time before technology gets to the market," he said.

Frederik Wittock, head of European R&D at Johnson & Johnson, believes scientists should avoid being automatically suspicious of corporate motives for working with academics.

"If a company like mine gives funding with the best of intentions, it is looked upon as if all it wants is to sell more drugs," Wittock said while calling for universities to be more open and transparent about their sources of funding.

Joachim von Heimburg, head of Procter & Gamble's Connect & Develop Programme, gave more advice for budding academic entrepreneurs: "When you mention intellectual property, lots of people have dollar signs in their eyes but this is not very helpful as it is not the issue.

"For us, the real issue is value creation. Some academics do not realise that their discovery may be bringing something to an existing brand."

Many participants in the ESOF sessions insisted on the need for Europe to catch up with the US in terms of technology transfer, or even face up to the emerging challenge of China and India. While such issues may sound all too familiar to seasoned observers of academia, some people were optimistic that conditions for university-industry cooperation in Europe were improving.

Frain referred to the Irish government's recent decision to invest more than EUR30 million (US$47.6 million) in developing TTOs at Irish universities as one positive sign, with the European Commission's emphasis on knowledge transfer in the recent European Research Area Green Paper a second one. "There is progress but it is very slow," he said.

Jonathan Zuck, President of the Association for Competitive Technology, was much more critical. He believes the European Commission and national governments often get in the way of innovation and pointed to the lack of a single European patent as one example of this phenomenon.

"I hear that once again the question of the patent is being held up by disputes over languages," he said. "I know the language issue is important but is the patent really the place to resolve it? It's not as if it were Don Quixote."

rebecca.warden@uw-news.com