Technology Transfer Follow-up Committee FITT (Fostering Interregional Exchange in ICT Technology Transfer)

2 | Technology Transfer Follow-up Committee Partner Logo 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

3 | Technology Transfer Follow-up Committee Partner Logo 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

4 | Technology Transfer Follow-up Committee Partner Logo Template description Three types of description:

5 | Technology Transfer Follow-up Committee Partner Logo 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

6 | Technology Transfer Follow-up Committee Partner Logo 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” Minalogic), 1 from EPFL (CH), 1 private company CEO, 1 person from OSEO

7 | Technology Transfer Follow-up Committee Partner Logo 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.

8 | Technology Transfer Follow-up Committee Partner Logo 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)

9 | Technology Transfer Follow-up Committee Partner Logo 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

10 | Technology Transfer Follow-up Committee Partner Logo 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

11 | Technology Transfer Follow-up Committee Partner Logo 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

12 | Technology Transfer Follow-up Committee Partner Logo Suggested Readings  Link to bibliography:  Link to code book: Opportunity Assessment Transfer strategy Start-up creation Exploitation External experts  Link to related websites: