Christmas Quiz 2021

A few questions as 2021 comes to an end. Some but not all about university technology transfer.

What do you do?

“What do you do?” - “I work in University Technology Transfer” - “What’s that?”?

In the old days this could be a difficult question to answer, as many people were unfamiliar with the brilliant research going on in universities, and how some of it is transferred to companies who develop the research outputs into products and services that people want.

The pandemic has provided the perfect answer to this common exchange, as Technology Transfer (TT) people can now tell the story of the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine, researched in university laboratories, and licensed to a major pharmaceutical company for development, distribution and delivery - to millions of people. Or the story of the UCL-Ventura breathing device, the Norwegian NTNU COVID test technology, or ... the amazing story from your university, of university research outputs being transferred to business to be developed into products and services that benefit society.

Why is it complicated?

I was chatting to someone who had recently started working in a university Technology Transfer Office (TTO), and she asked: Everyone says its complicated, and I understand that, I’m sure it is, but why, why is it complicated?

I rambled for a while, trying to say three things: (1) universities and business are very different, the people are very different, and do not understand each other; (2) universities are fragile decentralised structures held together by overlapping webs of administrative groups and generally do not understand technology transfer; they prioritise impact over income from the TTO while still expecting financial windfalls; (3) there are many moving parts within TT and the TTO, it is genuinely complex.

As I say in the book (Chapter 4 ‘Why It Is Difficult’): ‘Transferring technology from a university to a business is very difficult and complicated because universities exist for very different reasons from businesses and persuading one group of people to invest in ideas someone else has developed is very difficult ... Fundamentally, it is difficult because the people in universities are very different from the people in business. The people have different backgrounds, different experiences, different motivations, different personalities, and different objectives ...’

Are disclosures good or bad in Technology Transfer?

Yes, both. There are two places the word disclosure pops up in university technology transfer. One of them is generally considered a good thing, and the other a bad thing.

Bad -?A novelty destroying public disclosure, as the patent jargon has it, is a bad thing as it damages the chances of being granted a patent. A novelty destroying public disclosures is when someone, let’s say one of the inventors, talks or writes about the invention publicly, without the benefit of confidentiality protection, before filing a patent application. To get a patent granted, your invention needs to be new, clever and useful. Newness, or novelty, is tested against everything publicly available before the day you file the patent application, including your own public disclosures, which is why they are ‘novelty destroying public disclosures’. Think Patent Before You Publish.

Good -?University technology transfer offices hope to encourage academics to tell them about the amazing research results that may have commercial potential. When this happens the TTO calls it a Disclosure. TTOs count the Disclosures they receive each year and report the number to government and in annual reports; generally speaking the more the better. They are the primary input to the TT system. [As it happens, total Disclosures from universities in England have ‘tanked’ from 3850 in 2015 to 3200 in 2020; strange, when all the other measures are going up].

So the messages can be - “we want Disclosures” and “don’t disclose anything” - at the same time. [And you wanted to know why it’s complicated ...!]

Why is it called a Disclosure when the researcher tells the TTO about their amazing research? There’s something furtive about the word.?I remember a colleague saying - I’m just going to take a Disclosure from an academic - like a medic taking a patient history, like a lawyer taking a deposition.?Can we think of a better name??

What’s for Christmas?

Time Limited Working. I was given this gift on a walk with a friend during the year and I pass it on to you. Maybe this is your common practice; I found it enlightening. I was describing (possibly complaining) about the challenges of a couple of pieces of work I was letting get the better of me; taking too much time, not getting done. He said ‘TLW’ and described the approach. You have a piece of work to do; you want to get it done in a limited period of time; maybe because you have a hard deadline, or maybe you just want to get it done sooner rather than later, so it doesn’t drag on.?

What’s the most important part of this piece of work that you need to do next? (For example, the diagrams, the chart, the introduction, the analysis, the case studies, the executive summary, etc.). Allocate one hour to this, sit down, do it, finish at the end of the hour; it is done. You are good at your job, what you have done in the hour is good, possibly very good, certainly good enough; it is what you have done. Take a break, a few minutes, a few days, whatever suits. Repeat; what is the next most important part of this piece of work that you need to do, etc. You probably start with an hour planning the stages; you probably need an hour at the end to check it through. It works!

Do you GEDITT?

This year I was involved in starting an organisation called GEDITT. Global Equality Diversity and Inclusion in Technology Transfer - GEDITT.com, [email protected] .

Diversity matters. Diversity with inclusion improves performance. Lack of diversity is not right, it is not fair, it is not good.?

My involvement started with an article I posted on LinkedIn titled The White Board. This article highlighted the very low numbers of people of colour involved in university technology transfer, research funding bodies (charitable, government, learned societies) in the UK. I looked at the composition of 48 boards and teams, 603 people in all: 6.6% are people of colour (against 13% of the UK population (2011)) - half what you may expect - bad; 40% are women - four-fifths of what you might expect - not as bad. Progress can be made.

GEDITT aims to help TTOs improve diversity and inclusion. This can happen in three areas: in your TTO with decent people practices; in your Institution reaching under-represented groups; and outside these, influencing others (your spin-outs, your suppliers, your licensees).

Happy Christmas, Season’s Greetings.

I hope to see you in 2022

Tom