Just over a week ago I was at an SFI (Science Foundation Ireland) event for CSET directors, listening to my former colleagues (Mark Mawhinney & Sarah Macnaughton) from Oxford University’s Isis Innovation. During the talk Isis described the prototypical three stages that a technology transfer office has to progress through in order for it to reach a state of maturity.  As I was listening I was struck by a few thoughts…

What does it mean when a TTO has reached a state of maturity?  We’re living in exponential times with an infinite number of industry displacing S-curves (just look at recent examples in the music or automobile industries)…

…yet we are supposed to accept that Stage 3 is the end all, be all of the TT industry?

Technology transfer in Ireland is in its’ infancy; instead of thinking about what we need to do now that we are entering Stage 2 (Slide 1 & Slide 2), we should be running all out trying to figure out what we need to do to skip 4-8 and get to Stage 9.  We should be questioning and challenging every single assumption in the traditional technology transfer models.  We should be asking if the same underlying dynamics that brought about the US & UK systems are the same ones that are driving indigenous research commercialisation in Ireland.

We are not on a linear trajectory, there is absolutely no need for us to repeat all of the same mistakes that were made in the US and UK as the industry emerged.  The amerocentric model was the right framework for a very specific place and time, but would it be the same model if today you were to design the system from scratch?

More than ever Ireland needs the Universities to help address the current economic environment.  I don’t pretend have all of the answers, but what I do know is that if we continue following in the footsteps of our predecessors, instead of blazing our own trail, we will be damned to their same fate…incremental innovation, fragmented networks, lack of coordination, researcher malaise, etc.!

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