Microsoft: les talents encouragent le transfert de technologie[en] 

Just how good or bad is Europe at the moment at turning research into innovation? 

I think in many areas, Europe is good, but we are not as good as our competitors in America or in China. In those countries, there is much more of an expectation that people doing research in universities as well as having an academic perspective will also think about how their ideas can be exploited, either by partnering with industry or by creating spin-out companies. In Europe we are perhaps less good at doing that. 

Many large companies do have good relationships with universities and support them in their research, but there are many, many universities where you find very little activity with industry, very little licensing in technology or spinning-out of new companies. So where we do it - we do it as well as the rest of the world, but perhaps the intensity is not there compared to others.

The United States is always cited as doing much better at technology transfer than Europe. Why is that? What are the main differences between the EU and the US in this respect? 

In the US there's certainly a stronger entrepreneurial risk-taking culture and there are things that perhaps make it easier for the academics to leave university for a couple of years to start a company and try their ideas out and then be welcomed back into their university to work on the next idea. In many European university systems, once you're in the system it may be dangerous to leave it and you can't just come back in very easily. In some parts of Europe, in the UK for example, it is perhaps much easier. That makes the difference. 

The environment in the USA is much more open to people starting companies and recognising that indeed not every start-up succeeds. To have some credibility as an entrepreneur in the US you have to have had some failures behind you to demonstrate that you have been hardened or made tough in some way in the industrial perspective. 

So I think that it is in many ways a cultural thing. In Europe, perhaps, we have felt of universities as almost having a kind of bureaucratic governmental function, with primarily an academic and teaching objective rather than an economic objective that is changing. And we have been rather dependent on big companies defining major industries and doing their own research internally.

What should be done and at what levels (political, business, academia) to boost technology transfer? 

In academia there are two important things: First, to absolutely ensure the excellence and the quality of teaching and training that students get and to aspire to the highest international standards. It is no good just being the best in France or the best in Germany or even the best in Europe. You have to be the best in the world to attract the smartest talent and have the people come to talk to you about your technology. 

I think there is a lot we can learn in terms of best practice by looking at how the successful universities at technology transfer do that. The kind of mechanisms to allow industry laboratories to co-exist with academic laboratories. For example my laboratory is nextdoor to the university's computer lab on one of the University of Cambridge campus locations. The way in which universities can think about having technology transfer offices that perhaps include a certain amount of engineering research and development capability of their own to take raw academic ideas and help them into businesses. The kind of things where people try and create innovation clusters, science parks, techno-poles with universities at the centre. There is a lot of ideas that can be copied. 

The most important thing is to have the pool of talented people with smart ideas and the right incentives to help them create those companies and help those companies thrive.

The political side can help to make it easier to set up a business, for young companies to be agile - that's more flexibility about employment law and more flexibility about some of the regulations as well as tax incentives. All these work very well.

On the business side, I think big companies can help a lot by recognising that they can support many eco-systems of smaller companies if they think about their suppliers - helping smaller companies to grow their businesses and partnering with them. Certainly for Microsoft, where many of our products are used by small companies who then specialise them in a particular niche of vertical markets. We provide a lot of support for those companies both in terms of support with the technology, helping them with their sales and marketing and helping them with sharing best business ideas. 

So, all three: academia, business and government politics have an important contribution to make.