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TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER CENTRES
Lina, Dave, Erasmus University Rotterdam, the Netherlands, 295195dl@student.eur.nlFeskens, Vince, Erasmus University Rotterdam, the Netherlands,297397vf@student.eur.nl
Abstract
Technology transfer centres are centres that help and assist (potential) entrepreneurs to start upa successful commercial company. New research is done on universities but the problem ariseswhen it comes to selling a solution/idea commercially, a lot of starters don’t know how to do thisin the right way. They simply don’t have experience with it, and that is exactly why universities start-up these technology transfer centres. In Ireland we visited NovaUCD which has a close relation with the University College Dublin,where a lot of people study and do research. NovaUCD is a technology transfer centre, it hasbeen proven to be very successful, it connects research with the industry.Since we study on the Erasmus University, we looked at a similar organization for our university.This is Erasmus MC Incubator, which was created together with the Erasmus University and Erasmus MC This paper will give you a good idea of how technology transfer centres work in general and more specific how these 2 centres, NovaUCD and Erasmus MC Incubator, operate. Keywords: Technology transfer centre, NovaUCD, Erasmus MC Incubator.
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INTRODUCTION
Every country has an ambition. This ambition can be a lot of things and can depend on manyfactors like the amount of raw materials you can produce or the economic wealth the country isin. For The Netherlands this ambition is to get a knowledge-based economy; to be one of the topcountries in the world if it comes to being innovative.The Netherlands are already aiming for a knowledge economy but can’t really compete with other countries like Finland and other Scandinavian countries. Also Ireland is one of the mostcompetitive countries in this area. Why can’t The Netherlands get more out of there resourceswhen a country like Ireland, which was a low schooled country and in a few years has grown to acountry with a reliable knowledge-based economy, can.We visited Dublin and when visited a couple of interesting organizations, one was NovaUCD.We didn’t exactly know what the purpose was of the organization but soon we got to know thiswas a technology transfer centre. In our eyes this could be very interesting when looking atinnovation; this is where research and the industry connect to each other. In other words: theconnection between universities and companies.So this was a very interesting topic concerned to innovation, so tried to get as much informationas possible from NovaUCD. The next question was do we have similar centres in The Netherlands? We found out that we have these as well and one of the centres was created together with the Erasmus University. This shows again the relationship between University and transfer technology centre.In this paper we are going to find specific information about these centres and we will try to finddifferences and similarities. And maybe we could even find out what kind of influence such acentre has on the amount of innovation.
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TRANSFER TECHNOLOGY CENTRES
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Technology transfer centres
The definition of technology transfer is as wikipedia described:
“Technology transfer is the process of developing practical applications for the results of scientific research.”
This means that a technology transfer centre is trying to help you as a start-up company in this process. You can say that such a centre helps bringing your idea to life.But what is this process they are talking about. Many companies, universities and governmentalorganizations now have an “Office of Technology Transfer” or “Centre of Technology Transfer”.This centre is dedicated to identify research which has potential commercial interest andstrategies for how to exploit it. So this says that if a research has a scientific and a commercialinterest there still has to be someone that needs to make a practical progress for this interest.Such a technology transfer centre is often a combined strength of university, companies and thegovernment. Because of these combining powers these facilities have a global network that other innovative facilities can’t compete with. The university has the knowledge, the companies themoney and knowledge of the business side approach to make a product profitable, and thegovernment has the influence in the politics. For the government it can be important that their country is working on their knowledge economy. If you have a knowledge-based economy as acountry, a technology transfer centre helps you in being innovative.
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Now we now what the purpose of a technology transfer centre is, but how do they think they canreach it. So what are they really doing and what makes this so called “innovation labs” soattractive?A technology transfer centre helps start-up companies with almost everything a start-up companyneeds to function well. As a starting company you can rent some office space for a small price.They also give a lot of advice about how to make a business plan; they will give you financialsupport in making this business plan. And they have a broad network of experts in a broad field.So you have contact with experts in the university, but you also have the business contacts thatcan help you facilitate your product. Of course if you have a lot of start-up companies in the same building there is the possibility that there will be fusions, because an innovative product could be better if they put their powers together.
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CASE STUDY NOVAUCD AND ERASMUS MC INCUBATOR
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Methodology
Well the idea was to compare both the technology transfer centres that are related to theuniversity that we visited during our 10-day school trip in Dublin (UCD) and our own university.So we tried to figure out what the most important things are for these technology transfer centres.By reading a lot of information that we could find on the internet and information that we got inDublin, we started off brainstorming. Where could we find interesting similarities and differences between both centres? Things that we thought that are relevant are these ones, we’ve included thereason why:
General information
Just some background information of the centres. This includes the year the centre was createdwhich could be of importance when comparing the successes of both centres. Maybe one of thetwo is less successful because it’s a younger technology transfer centre.
Facilities
What are the facilities that the centres got? Facilities like office space, research rooms andcommunication channels. We consider these to be relevant to successful commercialisation of ideas. Office space can limit the amount of entrepreneurs in the centres, same with the rooms,communication between university, the industry, other entrepreneurs and other people that assistin the whole process is essential to successful commercialise ideas.
Objectives
What do the centres believe they have to do, what do they think their role is.
Relationship with university
How do they work together, since universities do research and the technology transfer centres tryto commercialise these research results.
Successes
What are the successes, from the participants of the centres and of the centres itself? It could bean indicator of how well the technology transfer centres are doing.For each technology transfer centre we tried to find information for each point we mentionedabove. Afterwards we try to find the differences and similarities.
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