Unknown Speaker  0:00  
All right. Good afternoon, everyone and welcome to today's webinar, assessing and improving your office's performance presented by Autumn. My name is Samantha Skiba. autumns professional development manager and I will be your staff host for today. All lines have been muted to ensure high quality audio and today's session is being recorded. If you have a question for our panelists, we encourage you to use the q&a feature rather than the chat feature. If you have a technical question or comment, please feel free to use the chat. Before we begin, I would like to take a brief moment and acknowledge autumns and thank autumns 2021. Online Professional Development sponsor, we appreciate your ongoing support. And now I have the pleasure of introducing you to today's distinguished speakers. Starting in academia and before coming back to the academia, Dr. Tony Raven, Cambridge Enterprises CEO had a long history as a successful technology entrepreneur. The companies he has founded included summit technology, which was acquired by Nestle Alcon in 2000, publicly quoted Cambridge technology consulting consultancies, Agenzia, PLC and dimed and pioneer surgical diode lasers, which was listed in the US in 2002, before being acquired by angiodynamics in 2008. Tony is a fellow of the Institute of Physics and a member of the Institute of directors. Dr. Allison Campbell was the director of knowledge transfer Ireland, the national office responsible for policy practice and the performance of the Irish knowledge and technology transfer system. Having started her career in the biotech industry, she then occupied a variety of academic industry interface positions, most significantly a CEO and Medical Research Council technology UK and at King's College London, where she led tech transfer and research support. Allison is the past chair of autumn and a founder and past chair of ATTP. She has served as the non executive director on several companies and acted as an international advisor to government departments. Dr. Aaron Lyman is the leader in commercialization passionate about creating impact with research and, and is currently the Executive Director for industry engagement at the Queensland University of Technology. Prior to joining Qt, Aaron has LED industry engagement and research development for several universities and has worked across Australia and the United Kingdom. She has a PhD in tissue engineering is a graduate of the Australian Institute of company directors is a registered technology transfer professional and a past superstar Seth stem. Erin contributes to the commercialization policy discussion through her role as chair of knowledge commercialization Australasia. She's also chair of Qt blue box and director of cellulare. And finally, I'd like to introduce you to our speaker who will kick off today's presentation Dr. Christian Stein. Christian is the CEO of ascension a to an independent technology transfer company focusing on the life sciences that works together with public research organizations on the commercial exploitation of their research results and inventions in the pharma biotech and medical technology fields. Before Cristian became CEO of ascension in 2001, he headed the Project Management Department at the frog Fraunhofer patent center for German Research since November of 2020. He has been the chairman of the board of transfer Alliance, a German association representing over 200 scientific institutes uniting patent marketing agencies and top technology transfer agencies. Christian is also chairman of the MGC foundation and a member of the International Strategy Committee for autumn. He holds a PhD in molecular biology and obtain the Master of Science in the management of intellectual property law in London. And those are the shortened versions of our very distinguished panel, whom we're very appreciative to have with us here today. So without further ado, Christian, I will turn it over to you.

Unknown Speaker  4:00  
flight instruction dependence production. Yes. At the moment, I'm the chairman of the transfer lines, which is the basically the same thing as ultimately is in Europe or watching in the US. And I'd like to tell you today something about which we call a transfer audit. Last year, I think I talked a similar session about in about peer review for my critical friend which looks technology transfer offices, from practitioners view and very basically as a treasure Transfer Office head can ask other experienced and seasoned tech transfer managers to look at your office in a two day session. And then they tell you what you could do better, very good improves a very practical hands on improve process that's done by people that are at least 1015 years in the business and Have an RT GP, and have hands on experience in helping you improve in your own office. This year, I tried to talk about something new. It's an initiative but I've only kind of learned about about a year ago. And it is done by the founders Foundation, the shift have abandoned the Heinz Mix Foundation, but they offer something they call a transfer audit, and perhaps they can have a slide. The it's basically a development tool for universities and academic institutions, who wants to very, very broadly develop their cooperation with the outside world with external partners from business from politics and culture and public sector. So, this is an approach that takes the broadest way of knowledge and technology transfer and looks at the how the university can is doing in that sector and can cook the sector and perhaps it can have the next slide. So, I think what I really liked about this is this overall broad approach approach and the hotel related a little bit what what it encompasses and what that means, but basically, you're looking at strengthening the transplant old potential universities of an all university activities. So, you start with commercial exploitation, which is very coming from research results, but you also look in how you develop science with the outside world, or how you go into research for how you connect your the human resources that you produce at the universities with the outside world, not only industry, but also politics and other sectors outside. So, what did what you should not have happened, I'm not quite done with that. So, what would you say getting solutions, it serves to establish a guidance and a structure to create the right environment for knowledge technology transfer to an academic institution, more than just giving practical advice into a particular technology transfer team and provides universities that are interested in being innovative, innovative, with the best possible support to achieve their individual set goals and to offer suitable development process to strengthen the cooperation between business and science. Now, I could another slide you can imagine that this is not a very easy task. So, this is a one year process that starts basically with two teams. One is the university project team. And that is provided by external advisors by knowledge and technology transfer experts from different fields. And they put together they do this audit together they analyze what's their existing structures, processes, results of cooperation relationships, and within the context of strategic and operational goals of the university. Next slide please. So, the on this once this is analyzed, the general audit gives the university the opportunity to summarize individual activities and different developments and in an overall context and structure and then they get also provided with a package of what they could do of measures how they can improve the the whole context of the university all institutional innovation strategies have been implemented in such institutional innovation strategy. And this is not only for the commercial sector, for research and TV and teaching, but you can kind of select really, whatever different teaching fields and say this is how we want to communicate in this field, because the outside world with the different sectors in the concern, knowledge transfer. At the same time, they are also practice orientated and look how practically technology transfer works or how the research results are put into the use of society into Thank you. And the next slide, please. So, how does this done, I said, it's a one year process, the last quarter is really more follow up. But the first two things that are done is that the university basically goes to the founders Foundation, and says, We want you to have an audit. And they define the aims and objectives of the transfer audit. And they compose a team of a maximum of 12 people, which is quite a lot, but hopefully not, not too many people to be efficient. And with this team of 12, they are basically the contact for the transfer audit team. The these this club of maximum 12, people basically give a self report of the University of academic institutions to the team that is composed from the from the to the auditors, it's a team of similar size maximum, to which they give the report of the university with their goals, aims, and whatever numbers or the the team can ask questions, then this audit team that will be answered. So after about two to four months, they should have enough information to go then into the institution and have a two day audit. So this means they are talking to the audit team and the project team of the university are talking to each other, they are interviewing people are talking to people, they can ask questions, hopefully receive satisfying answers. And by the end of these two days, not only prepared information, but also in a dialogue, hopefully a very good impression of the different activities in the knowledge transfer of the university. Then, after one, two months, the team will have composed a draft report with a catalogue of actions that kind of analyzes the strengths and weaknesses of the that are found in this process, the most different fields. And together with the project team, the management of the university, they put together a they do a final report from that draft report that everybody agrees on. And the last quarter of the year, is then used to see what can be implemented? What's the future strategy? And how do you kind of deal with all the things that you have learned from the audit? Next slide. So what does the university get? First of all, I think because of the broad engagement of all Second of all areas of the University of the teaching staff of their professors, the PI's administration, you get a reason awareness to have all knowledge and technology transfer matters. Also, of course, you get the action focused program or package that tells you what to do next. And you because it's such an individualized program, you get the opportunity to align all your activities and partial developments into A into the university

Unknown Speaker  13:57  
goals and, and strategy strategies. So, that that you have a broad package that does not only concern commercial exploitation, but as that goes up to connecting your human resources to whatever accompanies to look what to do in humanities, so that you have the broadest possible input or that you can align all your strategies from these different areas into one way to occur and to cooperate in an integrated way to cooperate with the outside world. And and of course, what you keep is the connections that you've done with the with the auditors because they are kept as a contact for the for the people that were in this in this audit and can often not the slide is

Unknown Speaker  14:58  
so what liked about this approach is that that is so much broader not doesn't only focus on purely our, our little or our small technology trends for both, but it goes much further than the topic of commercial exploitation or cooperation with industry, and just goes into politics into and outside the business sector, into all kinds of different sectors in society. But of course, you bind a dozen people of your own universities, the whole process takes more or less a year, you have a, you lead a strong commitment by your management. And then in opposite, for example, to the peer review by critical friend. It's not the tech transfer the head of the tech transfer offices that does that, and connects to the transfer audit. But it is actually usually the ministry or the stakeholders of the university that asked the university to be audited. So there's much more, it's an egg, quite external process. And in the last thing is, of course, a process like that is not done like the peer review for critical friend with $1 10,000 or 12,000 euros pound dollars, whatever you want to. But with that 40 to 50,000 euros a relatively expensive adventure. So this is what I wanted to, I just wanted to introduce you into this very broad approach of looking at knowledge transfer in a university. And I quite liked the model, because it's so it's so much different from, for example, what ACP or others have to offer. And what I thought was very interesting that is really extremely well perceived in the University and Research Institution landscape, because the transfer orders has been carried out, I think, more than 50 times, which is quite interesting, when you think that there are only about 400 universities and research institutions in Germany. Under that I'll start a little introduction into the transfer audit. And I'm excited what's coming next. Thank you.

Unknown Speaker  17:42  
Hello, there, and that was us attempting to move seamlessly, and then perhaps not quite effecting that. Hi, I'm Allison. And I like to tell you a little bit about recognizing the profession. I'm also quite aware that I seem to be talking dark, which is never particularly good. So just bear with me one second. And I'll see if I can turn off a background light. And see if that makes it any clearer. I guess for those of you who are joining us, you get the delights of seeing late at night and early in the morning across the globe. So I think it's really interesting that, you know, we're Christian was ending off in terms of talking about the external reference points and and how that's that's being received by the universities and the institute's and I'm going to talk about recognizing the profession. And it's going to appear to be something that's quite individual. But stay with me to slide six. And you'll you'll find out a little bit more about how it fits in that, that broader picture. So to our first slide, please. Thank you. So Christian, there was talking about knowledge transfer and knowledge tech transfer Ktt. I stuck with the old money of calling it TT. But I think, you know, what we need to pull out here is what is it today, I'm not going to read out all of these bullet points to you. But what I'm trying to demonstrate here is, as as we all know, it you'll recognize perhaps where you sit and some of the aspects of the business that you get involved in, in your offices. It could be all of this, it could be some of this you personally, it could be the majority of this. tech transfer is quite different today in its breadth and its remit. And also think where it's undertaken, really is is very broad as well. It's way beyond universities, and even government labs, etc, through to charity and actually to industry. And that's something that is relevant to this particular qualification. And what we what we don't know necessarily have within our profession is a true recognition of all of the elements and all of these aspects that we do. And that's that's where the, the rttp qualification comes in, which I'm going to talk to you about a little bit as we go through this. So next slide, please.

Unknown Speaker  20:27  
So I've talked about the changes to the profession. And these are happening globally. And that's why as I say, we were looking to find a way of being able to reflect what was happening within the profession and what we do, where we do it, both in terms of the businesses we work in, and the institutions, and also where we work in the world. And that's really what the recognize with registered tech transfer professional qualification is all about. It's actually an international standard. And it's about who we are. And what we do. And this is, it's something that is quite important that we have in place, there is quite a lot of interest from people who are perhaps not as immersed as some of us are in the profession, in terms of what kinds of qualifications should be applied to it. We, as a group of founding institutions, led by Autumn asgp, in Europe, practice oral in the UK, KCA. And Australasia took a very bold move to try and implement this this qualification about 10 years ago. Not only was it the right thing to do, but I think we have to take care in our profession that we we do do the right things to do before others do it to us. And in all honesty, this has not gone away, people are still trying to find ways to to ponder about how there can be more recognition or formal qualifications for our business of technology transfer. And I think as many will recognize, we just want to be left to get on and do it and do it in the right way. The LTTB qualification is one therefore that recognizes the demonstration of what we've actually achieved. And that's the training that we may have had. It's the contributions that we may have made to the professional. So you can immediately see just using those two words, it's quite broad. And it's proving very popular. There's 14 National tech transfer associations globally, who have now signed up to adopt this qualification within their own countries. Next slide, please. So I've talked about it being a broad church, there's five core competencies, and these I think, reflect on the profession and what we do strategy and business inside entrepreneurial leadership, effective engagement, legal and technical know how governance and project management. So I think you can you can see through through there that the core competencies are not necessarily directed to really good at managing intellectual property, very good at technology licensing, because actually, that's what CLP judges one that one's ability to be a certified licensing professional and that actually CLP does does contribute very much towards disqualification for those who want it. This is really trying to take a very holistic view, and take a very rounded view of the individuals themselves and the kinds of professional roles that they play and within our industry. Next slide, please. It's it's open to people in many different aspects of our industry. But they have to be actively engaged in academic to business commercialization and partnership. And they have to be playing a key role in achieving outcomes. And they've got to be able to demonstrate this. But again, reflective I think as to as to where the professionals got to achieving those outcomes can be in areas such as collaborating with third parties, doing and leading complex and significant commercial deals, and not necessarily those that involve licensing or creating a new startup. Of course, creating a new startup or spin out company may well be one of the things that they want to demonstrate that they've done, and also involvement leading in projects that will lead to a significant outcome. And we've used the word knowledge exchange here as well, which is becoming more common certainly in the UK and also in areas of Europe as well. And that might be partnerships not just with industry, but with other kinds of organizations and Could even be slightly broader than that. Next slide, please. There's also a candidate rttp qualification, that's really a designation for new entrants into the into the profession. And that really thing sort of signifies that they're committed to a pathway of training and development. And as importantly, so are their bosses. And it's also really an excellent tool to help argue for that training budget for individuals. And it helps build out a well rounded office and well rounded people and talent that's progressing through the office. And one of the nice things about this is that to be registered as a candidate rttp, you need to have a career aspiration plan. And that actually really articulates with your boss, what kind of training mentoring or experiencing the individuals going to need in order to progress. So this really is about personal development and talent pipeline, as much as it is about, you know, applying your credential. Next slide, please. So, to my last slide, I've talked about how this particular qualification can work. And I guess guess the broader question is, you know, professional recognition, why should it matter? And why should it matter, particularly in the context of today's webinar, personally, well, obviously, it's about you know, it's you confirming what you the individual has achieved. That's a good thing. Because this one's a global standard is actually internationally portable. And I think quite importantly, it also flag something about the director of the office or the line manager, and what they think about the individual. I think, interestingly, it sends a very strong organizational message, because it's an objective standard, that the office itself is staffed with good people, it can be an incentive to retain good people. As I said earlier, it helps the argument for greater training budgets. It's also a tool, I think, that can be used internally, Christian there was was talking about how the external audit University buys and raises a profile, they get more interested. And then similarly, when you got these qualifications happening, when you got an investment in people, that often gets reflected back into the university or into the management structure, again, helping to raise the profile of the office and our industry. And nationally, it matters. Again, another objective assessment that provides the evidence for investment in technology transfer, it has actually been well made, it gives some comfort, that the investment, both in tech transfer, and actually in the research that feeds tech transfer is being well looked after, again, a little bit like what Christian was was staying there. All of this provides some kind of a reassurance. And in this case, it's providing reassurance not just for the university, or the organization where the individual works, but also at a national level for various kinds of funders. And certainly, one of the other things that, while we're saying it provides comfort and reassurance, it also can work quite well to justify funding and to justify and additional funding, it can be very useful at times when reviews are being undertaken, reviews of the function reviews of the industry to be able to stand up and say we have actually got this international recognition standard for X people in our office or in my case, well, I often need to do that for X offices in the country. And I'm actually at a very local level, it's very helpful to be able to make the case both to academics, and the leadership in the university, that within our tech transfer business units, we have got well recognized competent people. And it can also sometimes be quite helpful when there's rivalries or potential rivalries between different kinds of business units that appear within a university to be able to point to the tech transfer office and say, These guys are actually the professionals who know what they're doing. And finally, of course, it's just another tool that can be used as part of international benchmarking. That's it from me handing over now. Thank you. Thanks for the slides, Sammy.

Unknown Speaker  29:57  
Good afternoon. Good morning. Good evening, wherever you are in the world. That's this great pleasure to be here. As Christian said, we had a session on this, the interest in which a couple of years ago led to students repeat, but I'm not going to cover what I did last time, which is about was about how you assess your stage on a maturity model approach. But I want to take a somewhat different approach to Allison and Christian, and turn 180 degrees. And instead of looking to outside experts, look internally into the university and ask the radical and perhaps scary question. So what do our academic community think of the survey service that we provide? And I'm going to cover that in two parts. One is about the perception survey, what do academics think about us. And then the other is customer journey mapping process, which allows gives us more insight into their feelings and thoughts along the way, through a project or engagement with us. So another Next slide, please.

Unknown Speaker  31:14  
So why an academic customer survey? Well, I think for all of us the perception of our office by our academic colleagues, probably the biggest factor in institutional support, or lack of it for our activities. And surveys can provide evidence to counter what are often very loud voices of naysayers, and particularly those that have undue access to promote views that they're doing a bad job. It can also provide good data. And I think I'll show how very simple survey can provide a lot of data on how you can improve your performance. And despite all our traditional efforts of letting people know about what we do, word of mouth is still the most effective marketing tool. So actually having a large number of academics who think positively about us talking to their colleagues about that, in their experiences, is probably our most effective way of engaging more across the whole of the university. So next slide, please. So there are several we do we repeat it three year intervals, so we can generate longitudinal data. As I've shown, you don't need to do multiple surveys to get longitudinal data, we sent it out or 5000, plus researchers in the university, it's 11. quick, simple questions should take less than 90 seconds for someone to complete them, they have the option to be anonymous. It's out there for 18 day duration, we put out two reminders, we offer a prize door drawer, three iPads for responders. And the stunning thing which really surprised me, because most surveys, you expect return rates in the 234 percent. We had 27% of our academic community respond to both of us surveys we've done so far. And that response wasn't just our fans, it was actually representative of the campus. And of users and non users, as you can see on the table on the right, next slide, please. So, next slide. This is a synopsis of all the questions that the full questions and options are on after the last slide. So there's two slides, which gives them all there if you want to take them and copy them. And I'm just going to look at some of the things we learn from just the questions highlighted in yellow. So next slide, please. So first one is were you aware of us before this survey hit your your inbox, and this says we have some way to go 68% of the University does 32% didn't know about us. But by breaking down responses into who they were, we can start to identify which parts of the university aren't aware of us and then work out strategies to to connect with them better, rather than just assuming it's a blanket 32% of everybody in the university. Next slide, please. This was one of the most interesting results. And it was the one which was the biggest surprise for me the first time we did it, because we all I think have this view that across the campus, there's lots of people who are disaffected with our office. And the thing that surprised us were 91% scored us six to 10, which is above 49% scored nine to 10 in the in the highest ranked categories of likely to riemeck recommend us to a peer or colleague. And that then goes across to the How did you first hear of this question as I said earlier, informal recommendation by a colleague 35% is much higher than any other A method that we use to connect people. So what we've seen here is we've got a very large number of people who are likely to recommend us to a colleague, which is going to be our most effective way of engaging. Next slide please. We can also look at which services people know about which the they use. So we can see that tech transfer is the thing most people are aware of 69% that is not the highest in terms of services used, which is consultancy. And seed funds a lot. Half the campuses are aware of it. But as we would expect with spin out companies, only a small percentage of the academic community actually use that. Next slide, please.

Unknown Speaker  35:50  
Now, this, as I said, you can get longitudinal data, because we ask the question, when How would you rate your overall experience with the scores repeated there again, when did you last use us? is also a question we asked was it a year ago, between one and five years or more than five years ago. And what you can see is, depending on when, when people last used us, we got a different response. And what you can see definitely is a very strong increase in the number of people that would highly recommend and US amongst those of us this most recently against those who use this more than five years ago. So I think you can see that you can see that we are having an impact on on their experience from the activities we're putting in place. Next slide, please.

Unknown Speaker  36:42  
So that comes as we know that sort of what their experience is, but one of the questions that we don't know is why they have that experience, what makes it a good or a bad experience. And that's where customer journey mapping comes on into it. Next slide, please. So what is customer journey mapping, it's a structured independent expert interviews, we use a specialist company called modern human. But there are many other companies that do it. And it's important to be independent, because then they're not telling you what they think you want to hear. They're they're telling someone who's completely disconnected from the process, what they think they tell us about people's perceptions of us in the survey, but not what why they feel the way that they do. And customer journey mapping tells you about their journey with us what they're thinking or feeling along the way, and where the highs and lows are. And when we know the low points, we can address them and improve the overall experience. Next slide. So this is a customer journey map. One of the many we have this is for technology immersion commercializing an idea of a technology transfer. And you can see the four different colors represent people who worked with us before coming in either with a licensee in tow or just with an idea. And the same for people who are doing it for the first time. The first thing you notice is people doing it for the first time there is a big negative point, a low point at first contact, then the next low point is where we are telling them their babies. Luckily, we don't like their idea. We don't think they want to pursue it. And then there's low points at the end with all the work which is involved with external evaluation. Fighting for national patents depends very much on how much change is required after the examination process. And then it comes back and they start to receive or not receive property payments. But that's a whole density of information in there, which can be drawn out. Next slide, please. So but what what did we learn from this, when we looked at in detail was something that came as what a friend of mine calls a flasher that blindingly off. Yes. And it's almost sort of wider than that. It should have should have been blatantly obvious to us. But there are three things which I think three main things we learned, we understood not all customers and say, the first contact, for example, especially shows that. So we put in new modes of first contact to make it easier and simpler and less daunting to do. So our standard disclosure form us who the inventors are, what their percentages are. So we have an idea disclosure form. Now it just says What's your tell us what your idea is? And let's start from there. The low points are often associated with a saying no, we don't want to do something we don't think it's good idea. We don't think we should be investing in this. So we've introduced training on how to say no, not just a no but also points to other avenues that people can pursue. We do say in sort of fishing, if you are successful, if you go on and are successful, come back and celebrate we'll say collaborate with you because we don't have the monopoly on on foresight. And knowing what's going on is important. And so there are points there in the grass where they felt that they they weren't aware of what was happening and people were not in contact with them. So we are now in the process of introducing an academic portal, where they can online go in and see the status for their projects, the financial statements of the monies, they received record notes and pick up things they can do in online training with us to to improve their knowledge and skills in an area because one thing we found was that academics, particularly senior academics don't like to show a lack of knowledge to their colleagues by asking someone that doesn't know about the process. So given them sort of discrete ways they can educate themselves is an important part of that last slide, I think is to say thank you. And beyond this, Sammy will skip over the next few slides quickly. But they'll all be available, as she said, after the event. And you can go back through there. And you can see the detail on two slides, the questions there that if you want to pick those up and ask them as yourselves

Unknown Speaker  41:30  
Hello, everyone. For me, I am saying good morning for the future. So thanks so much for joining us today. My name is Aaron Rayment. I'm chair of knowledge commercialization, Australasia, and also executive director of industry engagement at the Queensland University of Technology. So based here in Brisbane, Australia. Next slide, please. Before I kick off, I would just like to acknowledge the traditional items on the land on which I present this morning, the terrible and the younger peoples and just pay my respects to their elders past and present. Next slide.

Unknown Speaker  42:12  
Okay, so I went back to my presentation from a couple of years ago now, and, and I think it was maybe a Christian that said last year, and I think for all of us, 2020 just went by in a bit of a blur, or quite quickly, same time. So what I'm talking about today is a capability framework going back to the individual. So trying to understand what a technology transfer professional commercialization professional, what we actually do. And, and the reason why kcaa started on this journey was really similar to a lot of the reasons why ATTP started around, you know, rttp designation. So there's a lot of conversation in our, in our broad media, in our press around commercialization, and the fact that Australia is terrible at it. So, in 2019, here are some newspaper clippings that I pulled around the fact that, you know, research is an industry, you know, is it our father's industry as universities or is it industry's fault? Or are we missing out on rivers of gold, there was a lot of political activity at the time around a National Innovation and Science Agenda, which was his big splashy announcement. And then the leader of the party at that time was no longer popular. So for a couple of years there none of us said the word innovation in any sort of political or funding setting, just to make sure that we weren't you know, tarred along with that brush. So obviously, it's been a couple of years. And I thought, hey, maybe it's changed. Next slide, please. And unfortunately, it hasn't. So what's happened recently is that we've really kicked off a discussion in Australia around research commercialization. And it's really focusing around money as well, the fact that universities should be making more money out of research that happens in our universities, that we should stop selling it overseas, that we should start creating more industries in business within the country. And while I'm very supportive of all of those things, a lot of this really rests on the fact that it's focusing around the tech transfer offense. So the university or the researchers, without really acknowledging the whole other side of the spectrum of what happens when we do a deal or we engage. We can be out as much as we want. But without local industry and local business, being able to absorb that capacity, it becomes really challenging. So this is the kind of setting that we were in and still are in when we started looking at this framework. And it was a few years ago now. So next slide, please. So the reason why we need it? Well, first of all, it's really around, you know, what do we do? If you talk to your parents or neighbors or someone that you meet? And they say, oh, you know, what do you actually now what do you do? Generally, what I say is, you know, I work at a university, and I help researchers connect with industry. And, and sometimes, sometimes that's enough. But then other times, it's not as simple as saying, I'm a lawyer, or I'm an accountant, or I'm a doctor, where someone really easily associate what that profession is. So first of all, we wanted to ensure that with this framework, we can provide career pathways, and just acknowledgement that this is a career. So having entry points, having exit points, and really trying to get individuals to understand, you know, what the roles are, if they are looking for a commercialization role, what that means, what that role actually entails, and how do we recruit the right people. If we then step back and look more at an office, at a university, and an organization, really understanding what our resource requirements are. So with all of these teams, and with some of the work that Alison presented around rttp, it's really about understanding those broad resource requirements. Sure, we're the people that do the deals in terms of the commercialization or the tech transfer. But there's a whole lot of other structure that goes around that. There's lots of, you know, organization, there's leadership, there's finances, HR. So really understanding how that that all comes together. And this is probably the reason why we started it was really understanding those external expectations. So being able to define what we do, and then being able to tell it to and engage with industry, with government, and also our own university executives. In most cases, commercialization, tech transfer offices will always be a cost center, there are very few that break even or, you know, our profit building in terms of around the globe. But we do so much more than just, you know, potentially create revenue through licensing or, you know, equity and startups is that we actually are able to use the outputs of the research and connect it into places that make it useful, that create new products and new services and new jobs. So really trying to understand how that whole ecosystem works. And being able to communicate that clearly both to our university, executive and to government. We also thought it was a great opportunity to really contribute to the professionalization of our sector. So I need to update that web link, actually, which I will do before somebody sends out those sites. But the capability framework, you can download it from our website, it's freely available in terms of the full report, and it's about 80 pages. So it goes into a lot of detail. Next slide, please. And so this is what it looks like we actually commissioned it back in 2016. So it's been about five years now. So as a, as a piece of work that we've done, it's probably up to the point as well, particularly with our domestic conversation around university research commercialization, where we will look to do a bit of a refresh, say, the next 12 to 18 months. So watch this space. In terms of the report, we actually received funding from the Australian Professional Standards Council to do this. And so the Professional Standards Council is the body in Australia that determines, you know, how you are accredited as a different profession. So I mean, my examples of a lawyer or a doctor or an accountant, there are clear requirements for why and how you can be a profession versus a practitioner. Next slide, please.

Unknown Speaker  48:58  
So as part of this report, we went out and we spoke to people. So we spoke to both people within tech transfer offices, commercialization officers within universities. And we also spoke to industry as well. And so it was really about trying to understand, you know, what they thought, first of all, what we did, why we did it? Did we do it to make money? Do we do it for public good? Did we want to create jobs? Or did we just want to ensure that the country was competitive and productive? And so all of those things came out in terms of why we might commercialize. There were a couple of options. But generally, most universities did it for both income and also industry connections. So and the overwhelming majority did it for, you know, at least industry connections, because only 9% of our respondents said that they only commercialized being home. Some of the interesting things were that how we measured up can had to how we thought we were doing as tech transfer offices and tech transfer professionals, versus how our stakeholders thought we were doing. So we thought we were really great at things like strategy and getting results. And our stakeholders thought that was really an area that we could develop in. So some of those things were really fascinating in terms of a bit of a mismatch in expectations. And sometimes that can also be due to the fact that we might have, you know, different ideals about what an outcome might mean, and, and how to define that and how that creates value for someone. So there was definitely a lot of work that went in after this to really try and unpack and dig down. Also, if we were able to use this data, to then create our competencies in terms of, you know, what does a tech transfer professional, what are the competencies that they require? If we split them into different areas and different sections, what would they look like? And then how can we triage them in terms of career stage. So next slide, please.

Unknown Speaker  51:07  
And so here is the capability framework. And so what you can see is that in terms of the person, the practitioner, the professional, we're at the middle of that circle. And then we've got those seven areas that we split those competencies into. And then as you go further, further out the circle, you've also got, you know, further detail in each of those areas. And so really, it's it's designed to cover what happens in terms of, of the office and the function broadly. So for instance, it might not be that one person has all of these things. One person might not be the person who does the legal, you know, does the deal is able to provide the advice around, you know, the strategy and the business acumen, and doesn't necessarily have the relationship. So it might be that we have teams that I know, in my office, I've got an operations team who are fantastic, amazing people. And they definitely are able to manage the administration architecture section of that in terms of the framework, they have a good understanding of how commercialization works. But they're not the people that are out there doing the deal. Instead, they're the people enabling and ensuring that our databases are up to scratch, and ensuring that we're able to report effectively. So really understanding how that function works as a whole. So we thought that was really important. And as I said, this was in 2016. I know that in particular, when I was looking at it recently, the entrepreneurial development area. So this was really about, you know, skill building, rather than necessarily creating new enterprises and creating spinning out companies. But I think if we redid it, now, we might get a bit more depth within that area, just to show how the profession has changed and evolved during this period. And so I think that in itself might also be really interesting exercise. To give you an idea of how this actually works, though, if we go to the next slide. And so all of those sections that I showed you in terms of that competency framework, go down into this level of detail. And I don't expect you to be able to read that in terms of the screen. So I definitely get on the website and download the report. But basically, it splits each of those detailed sections into three separate career stages. So early career, or mid career, and then as senior, professional, and so on things like IP and compliance. So this is the type of skill that you need when you're managing the creation, protection, assignment and enforcement of IP legal rights. And so it just splits up all the different things and functions that each person and each stage should be able to do. So it gives someone who is an early career professional, someone who's recently, you know, got a job in a tech transfer office or someone who's looking at transitioning from academia across a good idea about you know, exactly what do you do on a daily basis, you know, you might be monitoring and reporting on patent regulations, you might be ensuring that patent fees are paid in a timely manner, you might be conducting IP due diligence. So in terms of, you know, those new invention disclosures that come in, it's generally an early career professional that goes through that first triaging stage in order to collect the information and be able to, you know, put it in a format that allows, you know, a more senior team or committee or you know, whatever structure you have in your office to be able to assess that. And so what we do in terms of the framework, is that with all of the early career, you know, abilities, capabilities, competencies, when you go to the next step, so in terms of a mid career professional, you can do all of that stuff, early career stuff, plus we have expectations around this. So it might be expectations around how you are the direct contact with the attorney. any firm you are instructing you are making decisions, you know, you are potentially, you know, managing alongside with, you know, your lawyers or legal staffs and compliance requirements, you're doing that direct negotiation. And so all of that plus more equals what you're seeing your practitioner professional might be doing. And at that senior level, it might be that you have the skills that already outlined. But on a day to day basis, you're playing more of a leadership role. You're, you know, briefing up to senior management, you're providing advice, you're being able to understand the strategy, you're, you're seeing how different connection points might come in. And so you can go into the framework, you can look at it for all of those, you know, different. So in the seven competencies that also split out. So you can look at all of these different levels. And it just gives you an example of how you might be able to structure position descriptions as well. So being able to, you know, align position levels, in terms of where the individual is, with what skills and, you know, responsibilities they should have, you know, what competencies and how to assess whether there are, you know, at the right level for their skills. So, next slide, please. So, how does this work in practice, so, we've got a case study, so meet Sally, she's early in her career, and she's been at the local tea to just started work there. She's been there for three months, and there are only two other people there. So it's a really, really small team. And so she's got a background in chemistry, she's done a little bit of work out in industry as an analyst. And she, she's really ambitious. She wants to know, okay, you know, if I love this as a career, what what do I need to do? Where do I need to go? I'm only in a small team. So I might not, you know, get, you know, be able to see people that look like me in terms of where I might want to progress. So how do I figure that out? What sort of training do I need? And am I learning the right things right now? So what she can do is she can go to the framework and say, Okay, well, I'm an early career professional, where do my skills lie? What sort of competencies do I want to focus on? If I wanted to focus around the legal side that we just spoke about, then I'd need to know this sort of stuff in terms of IP and compliance, I would need to know this sort of stuff in terms of advising on contracts and negotiating. And, and I've got a real big gap here. So maybe I should go get training on this section. Because if I want to move to a mid career professional, I know that I'll need to do X, Y, and Zed. And so that's what you can do as an individual, you can really look at the competency capability framework as a whole, and be able to target areas that you'd like to specialize in. And as someone who runs an office or as an organization, you can also look at the capability framework and say, Hey, do we cover all of these things? We might be a small team, but have I got someone who is looking after the administration side, looking after the engagement side? You know, are we making sure that when I send my survey out to my researchers, they know that we exist, and they've heard of us, and they've got an opinion on, you know, how well we've interacted with them. So the framework is really about understanding how that function works as a whole, how it works holistically, and how you can plan for that, as well as at the individual level of, hey, I really want to progress in my career. But I don't know what to do. So, you know, tell me what skills I need, what experiences I should be, you know, chasing in order to be able to say, Yes, I can do that. So it works at both levels. And we've actually had some of our members as well look at restructuring their teams, and also their position descriptions and how they classify their roles based on the capability framework, just really trying to look at that holistically across the board, and also give people a really good idea around career progression. So next slide, please. So that is all from me, I am more than happy to chat about the capability framework. As I said, we will update that web link before somebody sends out the slides. And feel free to download it. As I said it was done in 2016. So we will probably look to do a bit of an updated version at some stage. But this was a really large piece of work. So as you can see, when you interview a few 100 people around, you know what it means to be a tech transfer professional. You really do get a lot of variety of responses, and it takes a while to really collate that in a systemic way. So thanks, everyone.

Unknown Speaker  59:46  
Thank you to all of our panelists. I'm going to ask everyone to come back with their cameras as we get settled. We do have a couple questions that have come in so far that we can start with and then we can Next up more if they come in, so don't forget to use the q&a feature to submit your questions for our panelists. And I'm going to stop our screenshare. So we can see the full group with a gallery view. Okay, so it looks like our first question that came through is how do you organize industry or licensees to sing our praises in terms of our impact on their industry or company so that our efforts support our university request for continuing government financing for research? Oh, throw it out to whoever wants to take it first?

Unknown Speaker  1:00:33  
Well, I'm happy to start with that one. I would say firstly, ask them to do that. I think sometimes we might, you know, make the assumption or leave it to them to do that themselves. But something that we've done particularly recently, because we are in the middle of a federal government review, around university research commercialization, is we've reached out to our stakeholders and said, Hey, this is happening, this is how we're going to respond to it. Here are the things that we think are really important. Do you agree with those? Is that Is there something you might add? Here's our response. Did you want to take some of that and submit it as your own response? Or are there things that you would also like to highlight? So I think being really proactive around it as well? Because otherwise, if we don't ask them to do that, they might not see the importance or like how important it is to us, versus how in their lives they're dealing with, you know, 20 other things at once?

Unknown Speaker  1:01:35  
All right. Yeah. I mean, I think one of the challenges is not only getting them to say the good things and advocate, but actually getting anybody to want to listen to it. At the other side, I find a handy approach, not something that you can do too often, is actually normally picked up, you can piggyback on the back of something else that's going on strategic planning wise, or whatever in the university, but actually commissioned a review, a little bit expensive, but Commissioner review, with some kind of, you know, external God help us even an external consultants. And in an ideal world of film that they might actually recognize and appreciate. And they can go out and they can talk to the stakeholders on your behalf, gather some of that information together, and then replay that back as part of the report. And then no longer is it is it you sort of saying it. And I think the other thing that we've seen being quite effective, is quite different, which is to that. Not that that wasn't a proactive response, but engineering situations where you can talk around a particular topic with some of the university folk that you want, and bring in some of your friends from industry, who are part of that that more general conversation, but one by the fact that they're there, suggests that they think that you're doing an okay job. And two, if you brief them rightly, they will actually be able to pipe up. We're really glad the tech transfer offices here because they've helped us to do blah. Tony?

Unknown Speaker  1:03:25  
Tony, here, go ahead.

Unknown Speaker  1:03:27  
Yeah, I didn't talk about it. But as well as serving surveying your internal customers, you can do the same thing with your external customers. And we have done it is much more difficult to do because it's a much less well defined group. And you get the question of who are the non users that you're going to survey as well, to do that you can do it. And I think it's a bit like the results from like the internal surveys, because when we did the internal survey, I expected we would get a sort of few 10s of percent positive things, and we didn't really got 90%. And then you said is that a lot of what you hear is from a small number of loud voices, and I think it's the same thing can happen in industry. There's a large community out there in which there are some loud voices who's making some noises, some of whom have never even worked with a university. They just have a thought of what it might be like, it's wrong. So I think again, for us in the university, being able to say actually, whatever you've heard, 90 plus percent of the people bonus think we do we've done a good job for them as they started to change the whole perception conversation that well actually we are practically are just listening to us view small our voices. And I think we can do the same with industry and say, Look, we don't get everything right. But actually, pretty large percentage of our industry partners are very happy with the work they're doing with us. And I think that type of evidence provides a collective voice for them with actually asking them each individually to say things, they may have to go through tiers of the columns approval in their organizations, etc. And as Allison says, maybe Nord if there's no story, and yet on to get it out through media and press. So I think there are things we can do. It's not as easy as internal surveys, but you can do them.

Unknown Speaker  1:05:26  
If something went well, we usually just ask them for testimonial. And that's a pretty straightforward way to, I believe to go forward. It didn't go that well, then we don't.

Unknown Speaker  1:05:42  
Excellent. Okay. So our next question, the panelists touched on the importance of demonstrating the value of tech transfer to our stakeholders, ourselves, internal customers, institutional leadership, industry, partners, etc. I'm interested in the panelists perspectives on ways to measure the values, specifically the impact of tech transfer on these stakeholders.

Unknown Speaker  1:06:11  
Go ahead, I'm sorry, I think, I think value means a lot of different things to a lot of different people. So I think first of all, it's really about understanding how those individuals do measure their own value. So I know for our university, in terms of our KPIs, things that we, as one function of the university contribute to, are really things around research income, and then also being able to, you know, transfer intellectual property from the university out to external stakeholders. And so those are the two things that we know that our university leadership have to report on themselves. And these are the things that then contribute to their own KPIs and their own, you know, judgment on how effective they are. So we make sure that we are really clear in terms of, you know, telling those success stories, we keep really simple metrics around it. So I think for us, in terms of as a function of the university, is, we know that we are a small function in terms of, you know, our size, and also, most universities, or at least in Australia, it's very much focused around student experience and student income. And that is, you know, the real driver of the activity within the university. So understanding where you fit, and then making it really easy in terms of reporting around those external stakeholders, and around government and around, you know, just the broad public, I think we really, and we still do need to get better. And I know autumns got a number of initiatives, and you know, KCA, where we're doing a lot of work as well around telling our stories. So it really is about those case studies around getting, you know, some good press that comes out as well, making sure that when we have successes, we celebrate them. And so this goes back to Tony's point, internally, as well, that, you know, hey, we want to celebrate your success, we want to make sure that when you're doing great things that we shout about them, that we're able to, then the way that I like to put it within my university, is that I like to create a bit of that, you know, competitive collaborative tension around researchers as well. So when they look at something that we announce, when we look at a company that we just spun off, or a deal that we've just done, they look at it and go, you know, hey, wait, why isn't that me? Why? Why am I doing that right now. And really trying to create that momentum around, you know, working with the office, how we can add value and how we can make their lives easier while getting these really great impact stories. So I think it's really around, you know, being able to understand how people measure value, getting those metrics really easily and simply and not overcomplicating it, and then telling our stories really well.

Unknown Speaker  1:09:05  
Sorry, I was on mute, I can jump to the next question. And attorney, you want to jump in on that one? Go ahead.

Unknown Speaker  1:09:09  
I was just going to expand on that. Because part of what we did in our customer journey mapping is we discovered that actually there are different points, different types of academics. Erin pointed out I mean, large group of them are doing this purely because they're INSEAD in Australia at the moment you need to do it to get your research funded. And so they're not really interested in the impact or anything they're just interested in. Can they get enough to get their next research grant through the review process? We have a community there who are more altruistic they want to see their research done and they're doing research because they want to benefit the world. But Can someone else do it for me, please? Because I want to get on with my research. I'd like to get us then we got the true academic entrepreneur who I've got a great idea and I want to run with it, and each of them needs a very different approach and what impact that means for them, it's very different. The other thing we put a lot of effort into is looking for non traditional measures, which actually look at it from our customers use the university's point of view. So for example, we traditionally we count number of spinouts, number of disclosures, numbers of patents filed, etc. We've looked at things like how much of the consultancy income that our academics earned for themselves, do they gift to the research and the university? And it turns out that those gifts alone, more than covered the cost of running our office, and there's a whole load of other metrics, how much translational funding have we helped them win? All these types of things which actually speak directly, let's face it, the things they're really interested in, which is research and teaching, and measures, which are actually helping to support those through the activities ourselves, I think we look outside the conventional measures of counting what we've done to the impact of those on the people that we're doing it for, that can make a big positive difference.

Unknown Speaker  1:11:13  
Just add to that, and say another thing, it's not quite to the, the research agenda that you're talking about there, Tony, but I did just thinking about the kinds of things that the Vice Chancellor likes to talk about. If there's a product, you know, that out, they're actually on the market that they can point to and say, our university did that the equivalent of the the Intel Inside, you know, we did it, that's incredibly helpful to them. And they, they don't want myriads of information, they just need one, or maybe two things that are really crisp and really impactful for them. And also, let's face it, that they can actually remember

Unknown Speaker  1:12:00  
that absolutely agree. And often it's just just dropping a note, sort of just let you know. And then a little factoid, doesn't need to be anything big.

Unknown Speaker  1:12:15  
Great, thank you. Looks like our next question. Sort of in a similar way, we've talked a bunch about internal stakeholders. But Can each of you talk about if you are and how you are routinely soliciting feedback from external stakeholders?

Unknown Speaker  1:12:42  
I think they talked about some of that on sort of in terms of surveying them, but I won't I won't repeat that. And I'll let others give their thoughts.

Unknown Speaker  1:12:54  
I just say it's becoming more and more important to undertake the kinds of however, however you do them, the kinds of studies that Tony was was talking about, and that the questions I think are increasingly being asked, yes, you've got to serve the internal community. But what do people outside think of us? Because there's actually a reputational aspect and angle there. And actually, an office is a bit foolish if it doesn't take the opportunity to survey externally. But I know I'm certainly seeing a lot more over in Ireland in our country where, you know, questions are being asked, well, how routinely a tech transfer offices undertaking these these kinds of surveys, who's involved? And can we make sure that this becomes much more embedded, common practice?

Unknown Speaker  1:13:53  
I think we do. I need to be wary though, because we're all fed up sick and tired of every time we use a service from somebody, we get a feedback request. And that starts to become really irritating. So I think also, it's important to think about doing things which are very quick and simple to do, and doing them infrequently.

Unknown Speaker  1:14:16  
This my may sound heretical, but I'm quite worried about kind of, by now, I think our profession is not that unestablished. And to an extent, it is quite clear what we are doing. And I think whatever there are few things that you can measure quite reasonably, how many licensing contracts, do we get out what we contribute to the economy, what do we contribute in terms of products that are understandable to society? So the easy things that I think are accessible and that you can record regularly, but whenever No, listen to ourselves of permanently justifying our existence. I would not be expect that the same thing would be done. In the fashion, we do it, where we tried to measure every, every heartbeat of any client we ever met instead of doing our job, because I don't know, we are always at the limits of our capacity, and to permanently justify what we are doing, I find quite quite a danger of as I was quite likely to speak for Tony said that you kind of infrequently report. I mean, that's not quite what you said, but at least you get a you once a year, you do measure the things you have done and report them to the outside. And that generalize I think it was in Ellison's report on on performance indicators. That's what what do you think I think you can reasonably do what you publish cover live. Look at these things, report on them. But I would kind of, I'm always shying away from getting too much justification of what we're doing and trying to find another 10 performance indicators, how we can prove that we that our existence is justified. I hope we've passed that stage. Sorry that I'm so blunt about it. But I don't know what to think about that.

Unknown Speaker  1:16:32  
I can agree and for lots of lots of the public actually, a lot of our performance indicators don't mean anything. How do they assess whether 100 patterns is good, bad or indifferent? I think someone said earlier is telling nothing is about telling the story is telling about sort of, you know, what did the Romans ever do for us? What did tech transfer ever do for us and actually saying how that how that changed their lives, how the drugs which are treating the illnesses they have, the technology in their homes that they're using, all these things that impact their daily life, I think are important things to tell, rather than numbers, which means nothing to most people, because they have no reference frame for them.

Unknown Speaker  1:17:17  
But isn't that also dangerous, because we do tell the stories to justify ourselves. But we are a part of the of a large process from somebody having a initial idea to kind of kind of developing these over the years to somebody picks it up as an investor or an industry and and develops a product from it. And I think our contribution is as important as the lawyer that draws draws up the contract. But is it really something that is so I think we have an understanding of what we're doing and what we're contributing, but we are not bringing sorry, we are not bringing a drug in the market, are we just facilitating the process of getting the research results into connection to those who need them in the end, which is first the industry to make money with it, and then the patient to check to hopefully get you to get better.

Unknown Speaker  1:18:26  
Christian, I definitely hear what you're saying there. But I can definitely point to examples where if a tech transfer professional didn't spend the time and effort over a sustained period, potentially years to first of all clean something up. So to get all the intellectual property in the same spot, so the university could do the transaction. And then, you know, have the enthusiasm and energy and motivation to keep going I can point to things just from my own experience that I know would not have happened. So while we are definitely only a small piece in that large, you know, value chain, we are a piece that can actually mean that things don't go forward as well. And I don't know Allison, you had something to say as well.

Unknown Speaker  1:19:11  
Yeah, I was just going to say anything. It's it's a very sorry thing, but just just Christian there, as you're pointing to the profession, and the lawyer plays a role, they cetera, et cetera. I think one of the challenges that we've we've still got is that oftentimes, people will think we're actually just a cost overhead. And if we weren't there as good a job could be done. And I think that's that's probably why there's that constant sort of justification because it's still not, in many cases, still not completely as embedded as it might be. It may be okay, in some universities, it may be okay in some regions, but I think it's still sort of permeates the the sector. And that's partly why I was still justifying what we're doing. And I really like what you're saying there Christian, I was actually, I was actually sitting here reflecting to myself and thinking, this is brilliant. That's it, I'm going to stop trying to trying to actually push all these great things that we've done, because let them just sort of stand for themselves. And let's, let's do it. Let's just get back to doing the job. And let's be brave and say, I'm not going to make more of it. Because that actually is a badge of success that I don't have to. So you've promoted something here. I don't know. We'll carry it through. But I like it provocation.

Unknown Speaker  1:20:40  
Zerrin, by the way, of course, you're absolutely right.

Unknown Speaker  1:20:44  
But I'm more with Aaron, because I think you can, yes, we are a part of the process only. But you can do the subtractive approach. What if we had not been there? It's a bit like saying the wheels on the car only a small part of what it takes to do a journey from A to B that take the wheels off? And how far do you get? That's something

Unknown Speaker  1:21:03  
that I've been doing particularly we've we've been going through a review of our sort of technology transfer system and funding in Ireland. And that's one of the things that I've made sure that we've we've had people investigate, actually, that the appetite externally, and this is not something that you can do regularly and routinely every year. But what what would happen if technology transfer offices weren't there. And I think what's really great and really powerful is that we've got the voice of industry. And and indeed investors saying, if the Technology Transfer offices were not there, our experience would be so much poorer. And then that's been incredibly helpful in terms of a bold statement as to the value of of tea tea. And is that counterfactual if we weren't there, what would be the consequence.

Unknown Speaker  1:21:59  
And a good friend and former colleague of mine, Richard Jennings used to describe tech transfer as where the midwives. So we're, we're critical part of the birth bringing idea in the world. But the moment it emerges, we step back quietly into the corner of the room. And everyone else sort of fusses over, over the newborn idea. And we just take satisfaction in what we've done, but largely ignored in the downstream part of from then on, but it wouldn't be much of a different story without us.

Unknown Speaker  1:22:35  
That was a great, great discussion to be able to sit in on. So thank you all for sharing those thoughts. We have one question left. I also know we only have a couple of minutes left. So if we have to take this one offline, we will get to it. We had a question from one of our attendees, Chile, who's in the process of writing a new constitution and asked about which elements is a must that needs to be considered each of your opinions in the tech transfer area?

Unknown Speaker  1:23:09  
Foreign care is that you can you can perhaps put it in the q&a? Is that a new constitution that you're writing for your university?

Unknown Speaker  1:23:24  
For the public country? Okay. Well, I don't think I have this, we might feel differently, I think it's really, really challenging to say, which, which single element would you put in there in terms of technology transfer? I think I might step it back a bit, if it were me and perhaps talk about the importance in terms of economic business competitiveness, of being able to engage with the research system. And therefore, having having a structure having a technology transfer structure that can facilitate that is usually important. But if it's if it's of any help to you, you can we in Ireland have a particular policy called on national IP protocol. And within that there's a very short statement about what the countries policy is around research commercialization and why for us, it matters and it's important, and it's it's about it's only about sort of half a page. But if you if you are interested in in a link to that I will attempt in our remaining few minutes to to put that into the chat box.

Unknown Speaker  1:24:51  
thing the thing I would add into that is to is to actually properly resource the activity because we all know Do this for most universities, this is a loss making activity, cost them money to do it. And having a properly resourced office that can do it makes a big difference. And people look at sort of the simple returns. But the one I always remember is the Stanford and MIT things, which is they made Stanford maximum average, I think, about 14 million a year from from his tech transfer and licensing activities. But as a result of all that activity, their their alumni have created companies, which are turning over $3 trillion dollars, and employing 5 million people. And from that $3 trillion, the government will be taking about a trillion dollars in tax. So the economic return is clearly there to the government, not the university. And it's to make sure then the universe that the government invest properly to make sure that translation is happens in the best possible way, not by some small team that's really stretched and out of their depth.

Unknown Speaker  1:26:05  
Something very basic, and I think it is, I'm stealing here from Kevin, Calum and and others that basically, technology transfers to facilitate the transfer of research results in to the benefit of society. I think this is what what what we are doing, and the most important task. And, of course, Tony is right when he says that this is a loss, it might be loss making big business or not. Today, I talked to Karen, in my blog, actually, this afternoon. And she said they made last year 100 40 million, by the way. So they are through their language Makey, which gives them about 2.2 million in venture disclosure. So but But you're right, I think it is a loss making business. And if you if you put into a into the idea why there is technology transfer that benefits society, and gets the research results out there. In terms of products and services, then I think that this is perhaps what we need to say about our work.

Unknown Speaker  1:27:27  
Must say by the way, my interactions with Chile, I've been very impressed with what's been going on there. And you've got some really good people in the country who had some really great ideas are taking forward. So you're in a good place.

Unknown Speaker  1:27:43  
One last quick question slide and who all are okay, where the Tony, this one's for you a quick question. Did you conduct your own customer journey exercise? They've been considering doing the same, but appreciate the human manpower and time required to do so?

Unknown Speaker  1:28:03  
No, we, we contracted it to a third party organization. I think that's important that the people asking the questions during the interviews are not us. Because if they're sat in front of us, they'd like me to give very different answers, perhaps what they think we might want to hear rather than through one so I would not do it internally. And there are a number of good organizations choose one to do it for you.

Unknown Speaker  1:28:32  
Well, I think if there's any last kind of closing thoughts anyone wants to share otherwise, I know we're at time and I want to honor everyone's late evenings, early mornings, middle of the day, all of the above since we have a global global group with us today. Any quick last closing thoughts before I wrap this up from anyone? Okay, perfect. Well, on behalf of autumn, I would like to thank each of you, Tony, Allison, Aaron and Kristian for such an informative discussion. And thank all of our attendees for joining us today. As a reminder, a recording of the webinar as well as the slides will be available for viewing within a few days on the autumn Learning Center and is included with your registration for this live session. And please remember to complete the webinar evaluation which will pop up when you close out of this webinar to help us serve your needs in the future. Thank you again so much for joining us and I hope you have a great rest of your day evening. Morning ahead. Thank you all

Transcribed by https://otter.ai