On Thursday I gave this presentation at the CNGL Fall Scientific Meeting.  The thrust of the presentation is based upon the idea of TTaaES (Technology Transfer as an Enabling Service)…have no idea how to pronounce that so maybe I’ll just stick to TTO 2.0, which has a bit of a ring to it.

So what is TTO 2.0?  In short TTO 1.0 is static & linear, while TTO 2.0 is dynamic, evolutionary, participatory and customer-driven.

CNGL Researcher Engagement

Regular readers of this blog will probably know that there is no love lost between me and traditional TTO’s.  I have spoken to a few folks, like Gerald Barnett from UW & the Kauffman Foundation, who are advocates of pushing the industry forward however I get the impression that these people are few and far between and for the most part have been met with great resistance.

I think one of the reasons we haven’t seen a whole lot of traction for new ideas is largely structural.  Most change advocates within the technology transfer industry report to a TTO director and are physically and departmentally separated from researchers.  In such an environment there is little incentive or even opportunity for people to rock the boat and try out new ideas. Furthermore these structural attributes help contribute to an “us vs. them” mentality.

Which is why I think some of the things that are happening in Ireland are so exciting.  As IP Manager for the CNGL I am embedded within the research group and interact one-on-one with the researchers I work for. It is amazing what can happen when you sit down with an academic colleague and instead of going through the typical disclosure form questions, ask them about their motivations, goals and interests…and then help them come up with a strategy to make those a reality.  When leveraged properly this small structural change has a compounding positive influence on the TTO/researcher dynamic and more importantly on how novel academic research is ultimately leveraged.

I had a conversation with my former boss Tom Hockaday from Oxford’s Isis Innovation about my being embedded within CNGL and his first observation was “so you’ve gone native!”  My response was “yup…but why should it matter” especially if it means delivering superior results in large part brought about by stronger researcher relationships!

It’s a bit early to declare this little embeddedness experiment a success, but what I can say is that there are going to be some really impressive technologies spinning out of CNGL over the next 12 months (tribalX, MaTrEx, etc.) and our commercialisation pipeline is stretching forward a full four years with some absolutely mind-blowing stuff working its way through.