Conference Report

The audience heard three perspectives on funding mechanisms for early stage companies. Brian McCaul was first up and gave the Technology Transfer Office’s (TTO) perspective on Equity Crowdfunding for Tech Transfer, speaking from personal experience of running 3 successful equity crowd campaigns. Brian set out to address the questions why universities should embrace crowdfunding for commercialisation and why it need not hinder later stage rounds.

The SME engagement session involved lively and stimulating descriptions of three different styles of engagement, from three different sorts of organisation, from three different countries. Aston University's system is strongly embedded into the procedures, with relevant KPIs for all, driven from the top down by a highly motivated, ex-industry, Vice Chancellor.

Private sector organisations have experienced significant commercial benefits as a result of adopting and embracing customer relationship management (CRM) practices. Some have found value in simply structuring, formalising, prioritising and planning their customer contact. Others have taken CRM to its fullest extent: segmenting markets by present and future value, prioritising investment accordingly and designing customised contact and account management programmes that successfully encompass very extensive and often fragmented customer bases.

This thought provoking talk contrasted US practices with what is done in the UK. Knowledge exchange is not captured as part of REF here so the value of what Technology Transfer Offices (TTOs) do is omitted from Impact studies. PraxisUnico is working to counter that by raising the profile of the excellent work KEC practitioners do and highlighting the role that they play, but visibility to University senior management is still an issue.

Sue kicked off the session and talked us through the various soft IP rights that can exist, including copyright, trade marks, designs, goodwill etc. and put this in context by describing the inter-relationship of these rights using the Glastonbury Festival as an example. The session aimed to communicate that IP has many facets and a lot of the rights inter-relate. However it is vital that there is awareness of the rights both so they can be used and the problems that third party rights could present if there is lack of awareness of Soft IP and its value.

This proved to be a lively discussion as there were a number of patent attorneys at the session. A kick-off statement claimed that the IP system does not work for Technology Transfer offices, asserting that due to the lack of grace period, filing happens far too early.

Another view from the TTO side was that we need a system to enforce IP rather than going down the open access model. Some of the patent attorneys agreed with the idea of a grace period while others took the view that having a grace period would add to the uncertainty of the situation.

On a glorious afternoon, a group of us were fortunate to visit the IBM site in Dublin. We started our visit in the IBM Innovation Centre, hearing form our host Noel Crawford about the history of the site, and how it has developed from a manufacturing facility to the technology campus it is today.

This was an interactive workshop in two parts, with the first featuring "How to get noticed" and the second including a mock interview with journalist Adam Smith.

As an example of how to get noticed, a video of a new pan based on aerodynamic principles was shown, which originated from The University of Oxford. This was a good example of how video is increasingly used to promote technologies and engage audiences.

Speakers include Celia Caulcott (Executive Director, Innovation and Skills, BBSRC and RCUK); Debbie Buckley-Golder (Head of Research Engagement, Innovate UK); Deirdre Glenn (Director Manufacturing, Engineering &Energy Commercialisation, Enterprise Ireland) and Yasemin Koc (Innovation Advisor, British Council).

Prof. Mullins opened his talk by challenging two widely held assumptions about the creation of new businesses. Described by him as “centrepieces” they were: