www.FITT-for-Innovation.eu

Technology Transfer Follow-up Committee

FITT

(Fostering Interregional Exchange in ICT Technology Transfer)

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A committee to follow-up transfer actions

Technology transfer actions concerned:

Startup creation projects

Industrial partnerships with transfer of assets (license or assignment)

Industrial partnerships with transfer of competences (expertise)

Participation to standardization actions within a transfer action

An open source diffusions of an important INRIA code base

Exit solutions for open source consortium led by INRIA

Committee is advisory for the INRIA Transfer department:

go/no go (initialization and follow-up)

transfer strategy adoption

asking for an opportunity/feasibility study

allocation of ressources for maturation if needed

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A committee to follow-up transfer actions

Composition: 3 INRIA people

1 INRIA -Transfert

4 senior private experts:

two competitiveness clusters: Systematic, Minalogic,

1 private company – Mandriva

1 from EPFL (Switzerland)

national agency for innovation – OSEO

When: one meeting every two months

Process:Template description of the project built by the researcher, TT officer and Sectoral TT Associate

(available in the FITT toolbox)

Submission sent a few days before the meeting (no late submission)

A collaborative tool allows the follow-up by all the staff concerned

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Template description

Three types of description:

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When & where?

Timing

Follow-up committee created in January 2009

5 meetings held in 2009, 5 meetings expected in 2010

45 transfer projects analysed in 2009

Location

in Paris

organised at the national level, the committee reviews and follows up all technology transfer operations of the eight INRIA research centres

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Who?

Stakeholders

Before the committee meeting: researcher(s), a regional TT officer, the responsible of technology transfer in an application domain

Preparation of the transfer case: file should be understandable and analysable by the committee (no oral presentation of the case by project leader)

During the committee meeting:

People from INRIA: Transfer and Innovation director, Transfer Strategies manager, Technological Development director

IT-Translation director: specialized in start-up creation

Private sector experts: 2 people from “Competitiveness clusters” (System@tic, Minalogic), 1 from EPFL (CH), 1 private company CEO, 1 person from OSEO

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Pros & Cons

PRO’s

Transfer oriented mind

Continuous process (no call for projects)

Co-design and follow-up logic

Project management goal and early analysis

Not a funding booth

Reduction of uncertainties

CON’s

An approach which is not easily scalable

Synchronization to be done with other committees

Difficult to choose the experts, who must be legitimate to “kill” the transfer projects

Risk of excessive formalisation of the process.

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Why ? (1/3)

Rationale:

The Technology Transfer Follow-up Committee has been created

in order to:

Have a clear and coherent view of all the transfer operations conducted by a large PRO (managing 170 research teams)

Impose professionalization of the different stakeholders, who are now obliged to follow a path with clear guidelines, avoiding evident don’ts

Have an access to advice from experts from the private sector (closer to the market than the TT officers)

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Why ? (2/3)

Rationale:

The Technology Transfer Follow-up Committee analyses and

Does a follow-up: according to their maturity, transfer project are meant to be submitted more than once, which ensures the control of implementation of recommendations made by the committee

The new dynamics has been created and it results in collective brainstorming sessions to decide on the best transfer strategy to be applied (which is not always the one that guarantees the best ROI)

TT officer and researchers are not left alone facing difficulties of transfer operations.

Source: Microsoft Office Images Clipart

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Why ? (2/3)

Impact:

Committee started slowly as at first TT officers could feel excluded from the decision process and were afraid of a “selection”

After a couple of months, the majority of TT officers understood the advantages of submitting their transfer projects to the committee, which showed to deliver useful recommendations and to do a real follow-up.

Transfer projects submissions are now too numerous: people got convinced of the committee added value!

Source: Microsoft Office Images Clipart

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Lessons Learned

Added value of private external experts having experience in technology transfer at

large

A formalized process allowing people to brainstorm on elaborated transfer projects in

search of more professional behaviour (asking themselves a lot of questions on the

strategy)

The need to go beyond evidence or conditioned reflex and to adopt a real strategy

which can be followed up

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Suggested Readings

Link to bibliography:

Link to code book:

Opportunity Assessment

Transfer strategy

Start-up creation

Exploitation

External experts

Link to related websites:

www.inria-transfert.fr

www.inria.fr/valorisation/index.fr