Any issues in knowledge transfer?

Whatever the terminology, bureaucrats, and now politicians, have become acutely aware of the possible deficit in terms of commercial translation of university research. While commercialization of university research has attracted attention, it is not entirely representative of the activities performed by University Industry Liaison Offices (UILOs). Knowledge transfer seems to be the next step, but is too encompassing and vague. Identifying a gap in tech transfer activities would require some benchmarking. So is it a perception, a reality or a myth ?

Existing metrics for technology transfer, as produced annually by AUTM and StatsCan, may not provide an accurate measure of what needs to be measured: the economic and social impact of the translation of knowledge produced because of university research. According to those metrics, Canadian universities are comparing favorably with their US counterparts. The only exception is overall royalty revenues. Professionals in the field attribute this deficiency to the fact that the Canadian portfolio of licences is, on the one hand, very young, and on the other hand, reflective of its industry capacity and attitude. Canada only started to have sizeable UILOs in the period 1995-2000, while US UILOs had anticipated the Baye Dole Act and were fully functional by 1981. This Act was a rallying point for commercialization in the US.

identifying the right ingredients

So what are the ingredients to success of university research results? If we accept the premise that researchers are not generally driven to become entrepreneurs, UILO resources are determinant. However, those that do are rare and special — typically a composite of science/engineer background doubled by some commercial savvy and industry experience, mixed with an ability to understand researchers' motivations. This cocktail is generally mitigated by limitations imposed by a university's human resources classification system.

Despite those hurdles, the number of tech transfer professionals in Canada has increased from 40 to about 300 in the last decade — most of those have followed professional training given by the Association of University Technology Managers and more recently the Alliance for Commercialization of Canadian Technology (ACCT). So what is the issue? We should be reaping the benefits of such investments.

In fact, beyond the availability of talented resources are the structures, the policies/procedures and the degree of support of the research institutions. The simple reality is that you can have policies that may neutralize UILO services.

Most scholars in the field are now recognizing that few researchers are equipped or motivated to become entrepreneurs or to bring their inventions to market alone. Waterloo researchers succeeded in an area where the barrier of entry is relatively low, established a climate of real entrepreneurship in the heyday of the IT bubble, and now are pursuing from this momentum. But it is an exception in the environment of large universities, most of them with medical schools and affiliated hospital research centres.

support from the top

The real ingredient for tech transfer success in research institutions is the coordinated support between the president, provost, VPs and deans towards its tech transfer program. It can take various forms: satellite offices partly funded by the dean, prizes to patent holders, seed funds to entice early stage proof of principle, patent searching services or the inclusion of patents and industrial collaborations as part of the performance evaluation of researchers. In fact, there is almost an accurate correlation of the tech transfer office performance to its internal support.

So why is the pie so difficult to cook? I believe a number of cooks have been confused over the years. First there was the myth that industry partnerships equate with, or are a precursor to, successful technology transfer. Then there's the myth that most technologies must be material for commercialization. There are few inventions that fit the mold of ‘is it real, is it feasible and is it worth it ?' In fact, in the US, the number is receding in terms of the ratio of inventions per research investment. Third, there's the myth that commercialization is easy and that the time-line is not an issue. Fourth, most external observers, and even some university and government administrators, tend to look at the 10 upper tier US successes (and Canada has its own) and believe it is an achievable objective. This is the myth of ‘why not me', when in reality, it relies on probabilities in which p = 1/1000.

The last myth is cloudy and would want to prove that IP policies are the answer. I thought we had shelved that myth after the Fortier Report (Expert Panel on the Commercialization of University Research, 1999). But it seems to recur regularly in some quarters as a solution to fix the unfixable.

Industry is quick to blame universities and UILOs for not transferring enough, or simply not giving away (open sourcing) university inventions. Governments are now equipped with data that, even if they do not measure the impact of university research, show that we are in many ways doing as well as our southern counterparts. However, Canadian companies are not often willing to invest at the stage that inventions are when they come out of a lab. Thus, there exists the need for UILOs and incubators to build value and cut those raw diamonds so they can find receptors. There is also a whole concert of voices, mainly service providers (consultants) that would prefer open sourcing as a way to expand their business. We understand that.

Nobody is questioning the pivotal role of basic research as a mean to derive frontier or seminal technologies. Some are still preoccupied by the idea that industry needs to be associated as soon as possible to the development of new technologies. In theory, those protagonists may be correct but in the trenches the reality is very different.

One needs to build the technologies and associate industry in that transition on a case by case basis, which is the essence of knowledge transfer — a contact sport as most people know it. Finally, the tech transfer black box is still fraught with various myths and we are missing communicators that can dispel them. Perhaps Harry Potter can show us the way.

Alex Navarre is director of technology transfer at the University of Western Ontario.