ASTP 2019: Accelerators, Incubators and Knowledge Exchange

Last week, we attended the ASTP 2019 Annual Conference. Billed as Europe’s largest event for Tech Transfer professionals, this event attracts delegates from across Europe. We always enjoy attending this event as it gives us an opportunity to meet new people, catch-up with our existing partners and learn more about the latest industry trends. Having attended this event in previous years, we had high expectations of what the event would deliver, and we were not disappointed. Here are some of the highlights:

Improving Corporate Interaction with Universities: The Role of Accelerators and Incubators

This panel discussion included Tony Hickson, the head of CRUK’s Corporate Partnerships Organisation (of which Ximbio is a part). The discussion focused on accelerators and innovation within industry and academic settings. Within industry, the merits of developing accelerators were discussed, particularly in relation to enhancing reactivity to change, motivating the workforce, identifying talent and horizon scanning. For universities the benefits were slightly different. The university uses accelerators and entrepreneurial programmes to encourage corporate collaboration whilst remaining aligned to its goals. It also allows the university to align with student expectations of their university experience. The discussion recommended an accelerator model that incorporates multiple industry partners. This provides a good structure as the university spin off or start up is not beholden to one industrial partner. The outcome of this discussion was that using programmes such as ICURE, allows universities to interact with SMEs, fostering innovation.

The discussion also focused on social entrepreneurship. This is a new area, but one with high potential as minority groups could provide an untapped source of innovation, particularly when targeting numerous social issues in the country and wider world.

Policy sharing for KT - Internal Marketing for KTOs

Split into two parts, this session hosted talks from Tom Hockaday Oxon from Technology Transfer Innovation (.com) and Melanie Johnson from ETH Zurich. This session focused on both internal and external marketing, highlighting in particular the importance of understanding your audience. The session provided insights into what motivates an academic and how to share the right stories to promote the TTO’s role at the university. Departmental champions were proposed as a great way to create TTO advocates within the university’s departments. Melanie also highlighted the use of internal awards as a marketing strategy; The SPARK award helps to encourage entrepreneurship and greater engagement with inventors.

Ownership: Adding value to Research Data

The speakers of this session were Claudio Di Cocco, from the University of Bologna and Christophe Hanold, from Toulouse Tech Transfer. The session focused on how the value of research data is significantly impacted by its management during the research process. This session also discussed the internal policy necessary for a University to maximise potential, as well as open access vs data exploitation and EU database laws and copyright.

Knowledge Stock Exchange – marketplace

Ximbio’s own Liisa Chisty gave a presentation on ‘Research reagents – An underappreciated source of long-term revenue?’, that focused on sharing the benefits of reagent commercialisation with the audience and introducing them to how Ximbio can help. The session was well received with many attendees visiting our stand for further information. Many were interested in our not-for-profit business model and were interested in finding out more.

Our experience

We were delighted to meet so many people, who were willing to talk and share ideas around technology transfer, especially around how to solve the problems facing the industry. We had numerous conversations with technology transfer offices and institutes from across Europe, incl. Norway, Sweden, Poland, Germany and Austria.

For more information on this event or the speakers visit the ASTP website