How things change. Barely three months later and the world had turned upside down, or at least had gone into a state of paralysis never seen before.
We know the UK has been punching above its weight and now ranks 5th in the Global Innovation rankings. The proportion of R&D funding contributed by industry in the UK is 15% higher than in the US. Over £40bn has been invested in UK universities over the past ten years by businesses and other organisations to find solutions to their business problems. Last year there were over 350,000 contracts between universities and businesses. And the spin-out race between the UK and US is neck and neck with UK investments in spin-outs beginning to edge ahead.
In 2019 a new colleague joined our KTO office - so myself together with my fellow co-workers set out to guide her and let her know how to kick-off her career in technology transfer. I realised that over the relatively short amount of time I have been with a TTO (3 years), I got to learn about multiple opportunities. So, I decided to write about all the opportunities I came to know about during my experience in this blog post, hoping it will be helpful for those who are just about to join our world of technology transfer.
Research England originally proposed the purpose of the KEF to be threefold:
‘I know Kung Fu’ Neo
Sadly, unlike the crew of the Nebuchadnezzar in the Matrix, we can’t simply plug ourselves into training programmes and download the content directly into our brains. It would be quite nice if we could, but we can’t. At least not yet…..
“But we're a university! We have to have a library!" said Ridcully. "It adds tone. What sort of people would we be if we didn't go into the library?"
"Students," said Senior Wrangler morosely.”
― Terry Pratchett, The Last Continent
