Transforming Our Success into Yours

Transforming Our Success into Yours: Yissum is sharing its highly successful tech transfer model with Universities around the world

Today, everyone wants to innovate. Universities, with their abundance of high level research are fertile grounds for innovation. However, transforming good ideas into commercially viable opportunities i.e. innovation requires a unique kind of expertise and execution, traditionally known as technology transfer. Tech transfer requires an in depth understanding of both the academic and industry eco-systems and when implemented correctly has the potential to power incredible inventions in the lab into commercial products that can impact the world.

Yissum, Hebrew University’s technology transfer company currently dominates academic tech transfer in Israel, and in 2017 was responsible for nearly half of all tech transfer licensing agreements signed by universities as well as new company formations. Israel, as has often been noted, has more tech expertise and know how per capita than any other country in the world. The country was fundamental in developing the concept of tech transfer with two out of the first three tech transfer companies ever created originating from Israeli Universities, including Yissum which when founded in 1964 was the third tech transfer company ever to be created.

Yissum is now offering to share its best practices with universities around the world in custom designed multi-day courses. Each year, delegations from all over the world, request a few hours of time at Yissum to understand the basic principles of what makes its model so successful. Recognizing a need for something more comprehensive, Yissum designed an all-inclusive course to teach the fundamentals of tech transfer to universities looking to jumpstart their own innovation models.

On January 2019, Tamir Huberman, Yissum Chief Information Officer, gave a four day course at Tecnológico de Monterey University in Mexico, imparting his experience and extensive knowledge on the Israeli eco-system, and Yissum’s TTO model, including managing IP, commercializing research, marketing, social media, legal agreements and database management. He was joined for a day by Yissum CEO and President, Dr. Yaron Daniely who together with Huberman revealed to more than 40 tech professionals insights into modern tech transfer strategy with examples of how to lower the barriers to commercialization, put more technologies in the hands of entrepreneurs and corporations, and encourage external partnerships to allow for the co-creation of ideas.

"At the Tecnologico de Monterrey University in Mexico we recently presented to our Trustees and Board our 2030 vision, which states "Leadership, Innovation and Entrepreneurship for Human Flourishing". This vision will be supported by four differentiators that respond to the global forces changing education. One of these will be, to create "hubs that will foster research and entrepreneurship as a way to attract the best talent, ideas, knowledge and resources in in a diverse ecosystem". The role of applied research will be stressed. The recent training imparted by Yissum was an inspiring move in our process of creating a Technology Transfer Company (TTC) that will be key in these efforts. This experience allowed us to deeply understand the "Israel Model" ecosystem and how Yissum transforms ideas into potential products, by connecting with global opportunities. It was also a great chance to connect Tec to the Global Innovations Hubs initiative and explore potential Mexico-Israel cooperation through Yissum and our new TTC."

Quote by Salvador Alva, Tecnológico de Monterrey, President 

This customized course is available in various formats for interested parties. In addition, Yissum will be hosting AUTM Asia 2019 from November 4 -7, presenting an opportunity for tech transfer professionals from around the globe gain valuable insights from world-class speakers and panels.

For more information please contact: [email protected]