EU in search of technology transfer area

Pierre Vigier, acting Head of Unit on innovation policy at the Commission's Enterprise Directorate General urged for a change of mindset in public research organisations and universities, arguing that time spent with industry should be "at the core of their activities". He also noted that conditions for the free market of knowledge in Europe were still missing and said the Commission aims to remedy this by eliminating barriers for free movement of researchers, for example.

Asked why EU start-ups tend to remain SMEs and hardly ever grow above 50 employees, Vigier noted that the reason for this is the absence of a true internal EU market, which leaves EU entreprises to market their products only at national level.

Zoran Stančič, deputy director general for 'scientific advances' at the Commission's Research Directorate General, highlighted the importance of proper management of IPR for successfull technology transfer (TT) and noted that not enough people were currently working specifically on knowledge transfer in Europe.

Laurent Kott, the CEO of INRIA-Transfert , an independent company in charge of commericalising the French National Institute for Research in Computer Science's (INRIA) research results, said there were two major concerns regarding technology transfer: the maturation of ideas in research labs and seed funding. 

Regarding the first, he referred to demonstrating the proof of technology concept and developing a business approach before the research results come out of the laboratory. As for seed money, he said it is very difficult to find the first €100,000-150,000 in equity to help try out promising ideas.

German liberal MEP Jorgo Chatzimarkakis (ALDE) agreed with the seed money problem. For him, the two main problems of TT are namely the lack of venture capital and the unsatisfactory EU patent system. Regarding venture capital, he said that often even "the pre-seed money" to kick off a pilot project is lacking. 

As for patents, he said he hopes the upcoming French EU Presidency will bring concrete results to the community patent debate and said French President Sarkozy had promised "to open the door for community patent". MEP Chatzimarkakis also listed a number of EU initiatives already taken to boost technology transfer and concluded by saying that "we have done all we can at EU-level, now it is up to member states to live up to their commitments at national level".

Magnus Madfors, director of R&D Policy at Ericsson, argued that the main means of boosting TT was to ensure that the different actors understand each others' needs. He said that academia and universities should "understand the future needs of industry in order to do research on the right sector". Meanwhile, he said, industry should understand the "knowledge and the needs of the academia" and present its vision of the future, so that academics can see if it has any potential research that could fit that vision.

"Hire smart people, trust them and flourish their working environment," said Andrew Herbert, the managing director of Microsoft Research in Cambridge (UK) listing the requirements for successfull TT. He added that smart people can not necessarily be attracted with money only and that a favourable georaphical location of the company or research organisation and the surrounding public infrastructure play at least as big a role in their choice of work place. 

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