BUSINESS
Technology Transfer needs funding: academics
04-08-2006
by Maxim Kelly
Formal links between Irish universities and high-tech industry need a boost in investment, according to two leading business academics.
Professors James Cunningham and Brian Harney at the National University of Ireland, Galway, have called on the Government to focus in on the recently established Technology Transfer Offices (TTOs) in third level institutions across the country.
The two strategic management experts have issued a joint statement to bring attention to the TTOs, which specialise in overseeing the commercialisation of academic research as it is transferred to the business sector.
Cunningham and Harney argue that this process of commercialising research should be a vital component of the Government's pledged investment of EUR3.8 billion to build a knowledge economy.
"The effective creation, exploitation and commercialisation of research from third level institutions is critical if Ireland is to overcome threats and sustain economic momentum," said management lecturer Dr Cunningham.
"It will necessitate putting in place hard measures for performance metrics, with national and local targets, and it will also mean putting in place soft measures to ensure that the hard measures performance metrics will be reached," he said.
One of the main "hard measures" Dr Cunningham talks about is a central auditing system to record data on the number of successful companies or products spun out of university campuses, the number of patents secured, and licences issued for commercial research.
"We need to keep track of this data so the universities, technology institutes and the Government can set accurate targets," he told ENN.
In terms of Dr Cunningham's "soft targets", he said there has to be a cultural change within academic institutions to make staff and students more aware of the commercial possibilities of their research, and also foster an entrepreneurial atmosphere so people know who or where to go to if they think they have a commercially viable idea.
"Technology Transfer Offices, whether institutional or regional, are vehicles for this attitude change, especially within science, technology and engineering disciplines, and examples of success stories have to be publicised," he said.
Enterprise Ireland has recently issued a call for papers from TTOs to submit applications for a share of EUR20 million it is making available for commercialising research.
Cuningham believes this funding should be used to hire more staff at TTOs, which, he said are currently "understaffed and overwhelmed".
"Ireland should be attracting the best PhD students in the world and also needs to encourage the internationalisation of Irish research and researchers in worldwide centres of excellence. In addition, this means researchers have to become more commercially aware and be actively seeking market opportunities for their research with the support of well-resourced Technology Transfer Offices."
James Cunningham and Brian Harney recently published a book entitled Strategic Management of Technology Transfer: The New Challenge on Campus available from Oak Tree Press.
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