Speaker 1  0:00  
All right, good afternoon and welcome to today's webinar addressing the top three practices preventing your office's success presented by Autumn. My name is Samantha Spiegel, 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 presenter, we encourage you to use the q&a feature on your zoom toolbar. You can submit questions anonymously if you'd prefer or as yourself. If you have a technical question or comment, please feel free to use the chat. You should also be able to use the raise hand feature to ask your question aloud if you would like to. We will pause throughout today's presentation to take questions so just be sure to submit them along the way. Should you need closed captioning during today's session, you can click on the live stream button at the top of the page or use the zoom closed captioning feature which is turned on for you. Before we begin, I would like to take a moment to acknowledge and thank autumns 2021. Online Professional Development sponsor, we appreciate your ongoing support. And now, I would like to introduce our speaker for today if I can get my pages printed in the right order. Tom Hockaday is an independent technology transfer and innovation consultant with his business technology transfer innovation, and the author of University Technology Transfer what it is and how to do it. Tom has 30 years experience in the university tech transfer sector working in the UK and around the world. Most recently as CEO of Oxford University innovation limited the University of Oxford's technology transfer company from 2006 to March of 2016. Tom is currently working on assignments advising universities and governments on technology transfer, and is on the investment committee of three early stage investment funds in Madrid and Milan and Cape Town. Thomas, founder of global equity, equality, diversity and inclusion in tech transfer, an organization that exists to promote EDI and technology transfer around the world. Please join me in welcoming Tom, we're so excited to have you with us today.

Speaker 2  2:08  
Thank you very much. Thank you sappy, and hello, everyone. It's great to be here with you. Although of course, I'm not really I'm sitting at home in England, near Oxford in the countryside. It's a boiling hot day here. It's 5pm for my afternoon, it's really really hot, which is unusual, but very enjoyable. So shall I Sami, shall I start sharing my slides? Now?

Unknown Speaker  2:41  
Go right ahead.

Speaker 2  2:43  
Let's go. Okay, so this is always the most challenging moment of the session. But here we go. So there we are. Does that

Speaker 1  2:55  
look good? Looks perfect. You are all set? Good.

Speaker 2  2:59  
Excellent. Okay, well, let's get going so contents, what am I planning to talk to you about? And as as the title suggests that the three practices that you may or may not be preventing your office from, from great success. And I was asked to speak on this title, I've I've selected three, which here is project management, innovation community, and university alignment. They, of course, may well not be the three that you would choose. And indeed, as we as we go through, you may be sitting there thinking, Well, you know, that's not a problem for us. We've got that sorted. So so let's hope that's the case. But equally, I hope that what I say to you, in the next hour, is is of help to you. And as it shows here, the plan is that I'm going to I'm going to give a bit of an introduction about a few things, but then talk about these three areas. And after the first after project management, I'm going to pause, come back to you live, and see if we've got any questions. So just to break it up a little as we go along. So I thought I'd share what I call my work life with you. As Sammy said, I've been involved in university tech transfer for a very long time starting in 1989. In London, I worked there for a few years, I moved to Bristol University in the West of England and then moved to Oxford in 2000. By coincidence, I was born in Oxford, so it was a sort of Homecoming. And I was the director of the tech transfer office there for 10 years, which was an amazing event. variants. And then five years ago, I left and I'd been independent since then involved in various activities, as described here, including writing a book, which it turned out was published by Johns Hopkins University Press in your country, rather than anybody in my country. But that's great. They did a great job. And it's, it's been well, well received. More recently, I, I've got involved with a group of people, including some key autumn people to set up get it global equality, diversity, inclusion in tech transfer, which, you know, I personally think is a great thing and a fascinating area, and maybe talk about that a little at the end, as well. So that's what I've, I've done, but sort of the career journey. And I thought I'd share this with you because I don't know, I don't know who you are. I don't know what stage of your career journeys you're at. But, you know, this is what 30 years of tech transfer have looked like, for me. I, university, my degree subject at university was geography at King's College London. So I often say if I tried to get into tech transfer, now I probably wouldn't, because I don't have a science background. I don't have a Master's, I don't have a PhD, I haven't got an MBA, I haven't got any of the things that would make a tech transfer applicant CV look smart these days, I haven't got RTCP. But I got in early. And I guess the fact I stayed meant that, you know, I enjoyed it, people usually enjoy what they're good at and are good at what they enjoy. But my first working jobs was in finance in London. And I left that to work in tech transfer, because I really didn't enjoy finance, I thought it was very limited. So one dimensional. I took a job in University College London, I moved from there to Bristol, because of family reasons really I was, I was younger, then recently married, we were moving out of London, having a family wanted to live elsewhere. And I was the first full time tech transfer person at Bristol that a job had been done about a third of somebody's job before that. And that was a wonderful experience growing office from one to about seven or eight people. And then I moved to Oxford, what you know, what, what was the appeal of that? That the brand, the quality of the research? And I think that's what I remember, thinking was that if you're in a tech transfer job at a university, and you're really enjoying it, why would you move? And I think the answer for me was the partly this the volume of research, I mean, Oxford is a far bigger university, but also the quality. And if you're you know, a university where the research is really, really top quality and Oxford has been listed ranked as the top university in the world by times higher education for I think six years in a row now. And you know, you working with the best research in the world actually counts and makes the job certainly more challenging, but I think more enjoyable, as well. And that kind of could not be better evidence than by the success Oxford had with nine to do with me, the success Oxford had with AstraZeneca in launching the Oxford AstraZeneca COVID vaccine last year. And that's a great story, you will have great stories in your universities, about the researchers and the academics response to COVID. And the role of the tech transfer offices very often in helping get that out to society to benefit people. And I think the Oxford AstraZeneca COVID vaccine will be a great case study. I think it'll be written about for a very long time as to how that all came to be. But it's a sort of perfect example of what you know one of the headlines, I used to talk about tech transfer, which is that sometimes the commercial route is the best way to deliver benefits from university research results. And you know, we know that as tech transfer people. I think the emphasis on the sometimes helps because it's unthreatening, we're not saying you've got to work with us, etc. But it's also recognizing that as this example shows as others do sometimes Is it quite simply is the best way to go about doing what we want to do as what the researchers want to do, which is get their results out there. It's complicated. So these blue boxes here, they show all the different sort of organizations that have to get together and get aligned for that deal to be done by Oxford last year, and there were, obviously the researchers, the tech transfer office, there was a very large investor involved, there was a existing spin out company involved, obviously AstraZeneca as well and a lot of government support. So, again, this shows the complexity of what we're dealing with, which will be familiar to you. Another picture I use to sort of show the, what I call the overall technology transfer landscape is this, and I just wanted to share this with you. I think this was first drawn about 10 or 15 years ago, and, you know, tries to summarize everything that that that is involved in, in our role of technology transfer. There's a point to make about the terminology here. I talk about technology transfer, lots of other people, particularly in the UK and Europe, increasingly are talking about knowledge transfer, and indeed, knowledge exchange. And maybe we'll talk about that a little bit later on. But for me, my career was focused on commercial based technology transfer. And this is what the map looked like. Tiny bit of, of UK history. So, in 1948, the UK government set up a national agency to commercialize the results of research coming out of UK universities and government departments that was called National Research and Development Corporation that had mixed success. And in 1985, we had the equivalent of your by Dole Act. So the by Dole Act 1980 81. That I'm sure had, you know, ripples over here. And in 1985, what we call the Joseph Kingman legislation was put in place. So you had Mr. Bae and Mr. Dahle, we had Sir Keith Joseph and Sir John Kingman. And they pushed through the legislation which

Speaker 2  12:38  
thing first right of refusal on university tech transfer, and instead allowed universities to do tech transfer themselves. And there were some experiences over the commercialization of penicillin and monoclonal antibodies, that taught the UK that getting the tech transfer action closer to the university and the researchers was a good thing. tech transfer offices in the UK, I think Cambridge, probably the earliest 1970s, Manchester, Oxford, and then the vast majority from 1985 onwards so that by about year 2000, all research universities had some sort of tech transfer office or another. And as it says here, the names change and very tech transfer office Knowledge Transfer Office, often the word innovation enterprise impact sprinkled in, and I remember when I first came over to an autumn meeting, which was about 1995 I think it was so that was a long time ago. You know, learning many of the offices in US universities were T L. O 's technology licensing offices, and I probably a bit out of touch, I don't know the extent to which that has evolved and developed. We have a range of models here in the UK. The vast majority of tech transfer offices are administration units within the university, but some are a separate company. And the largest strongest universities in the UK, Oxford, Cambridge, UCL Imperial Edinburgh, Manchester, tend to have a wholly owned subsidiary company doing their tech transfer. Right up to date, that the sort of hottest thing we're dealing with over here is something called the knowledge exchange framework, or KEF. And this is a new initiative to encourage all universities in the UK to place knowledge exchange and therefore knowledge transfer and tech transfer, right within the heart of their overall missions and policies and processes and to make sure that every university has a sensible good joined up approach to this whole area. And along with that, is a new thing called knowledge exchange framework metrics. And the so called dashboard that we're dealing with here. And, you know, this is a very interesting area in terms of how we go about telling the story of what we do in tech transfer to different audiences. And from a government point of view, the way that the story can be presented in metrics and numbers, and here, this graphical representation is really important. And we can talk about this later, if you want. But obviously, you can look it all up on the web, as you wish. So that's the intro. Now down to the first of these things, which I think if if we can get better at or if we can get right is one of the major points that affects the success of the tech transfer office. So what am I talking about? And what I want to focus on in terms of a learning objective is if encourage you to following this or, you know, q&a in a few minutes, but discuss and critique your project management resource allocation within the office. Now, the bigger picture, I like to describe the sort of the things you need to be successful at tech transfer the ingredients or the elements as a list of things beginning with P, you need some people, you need a pattern budget, you need some policies, proof of concept funds are really, really helpful. Promotion, really, in terms of marketing, lots of processes and procedures, we know that there's a lot of paperwork involved, you need to do your performance measurement, and project management, we need to be really good at managing projects in our tech transfer offices, before diving into that, though, the people because it's the people who are doing the project management. This is a chart that picture that we drew in Oxford about 20 years ago, probably. And it shows the sorts of people we tried to bring in to the tea to so we thought about this as three dimensions the academic axis, the commercial axis, and if you're trying to do a licensing transaction, or consulting or research contract, it's kind of like a two dimensional transaction here. If you're doing a spin out company, you're also raising Investment Finance. And that's like a three dimensional transaction. And so we tried to find people in our to bring into the tech transfer office who had both an academic background, which we assessed as being a PhD is really useful for that. Because it means you understand a lot about a certain area of science, you're interested in science, and you have the credibility with the academics and the understanding of what it's all about. But also people who had then left university life and gone into business and understood the commercial world. So they could do that literal translation, sometimes the language between these two groups. And then also as spin out, companies became more common and popular, unnecessary and sensible. We brought in people who had investment finance experience, as well as academic and commercial experience, probably impossible to find one, those three things in one person, but we felt it was very important to have at least two in the people that we brought in to the organization. So, tech transfer project management, you guys know this. It's, it's simplified, it's linear. We know that life is a lot more complicated than this. We know we're not doing it on our own. We're getting help from our contacts, consultants, help from patent attorneys, help from researchers, colleagues, etc. But you know, whether you whatever sort of stage gate system you have whatever sort of database system, however, you're progressing projects through your office, it probably looks a little bit something like this, in that you are identifying things in terms of you do lots of internal marketing, which generates disclosures from the academics. They disclose things to you. Just as an aside, this use of the word disclosure, I think is is worth a bit of thought. It's kind of you know, the academics are disclosing something to the tech transfer office it's slightly furtive it's slightly peculiar and I wonder if we could think of a better word than than disclosure. And then of course, we evaluate them what are we got here? And the tree our systems we have to do this we then Assuming these things are passing through the various stage gates, we protect them generally filing patent applications, etc. And all the time we're thinking, what's the market? What's the route to market? How can we get this thing out either licensing to existing companies, maybe setting up a spin out company, whatever it might be, we then do the deal. And we then know we have to manage the deal. The post deal relationship management, obviously, is incredibly important. Now, the point, the point I want to make here is that as you go along all of these stages,

Speaker 2  20:39  
at the bottom of this slide fit, think of, think of your office, think of the tech transfer resource available in your office, as a sort of bucket here, or a tank, and you've got a certain amount of resource available in your tech transfer office. You may, it may just be you, I don't know if we've got any of the small office is represented, or it may be a huge office, when I was at Oxford, we had the tech transfer office staff about 80 people. So this is really big. But nevertheless, you've got a certain amount of sort of core tech transfer resource. And ideally, that resource is allocated roughly equally across those various project stages, so that you're doing a certain amount of each of these things. So that you successfully go from right at the start to right to the end, and you do deals. And for me, tech transfer is all about doing deals. Because until you've done a deal, you haven't transferred any technology, it's obviously worth saying as well that you'll only you're going to do deals if you've got relationships in place. So it's about relationships, which lead to deals, and I'll come and talk to that about that in a minute. So, you know, this is what a good picture would look like, in my experience. In the UK, in Europe, around the world talking to tech transfer people, very often, the resource allocation looks a bit more like that. And actually, very, very often it looks like this. Now, the problem here is that so much of your effort is going into the identification bit, the internal marketing, chatting with the academics, getting the disclosures, evaluating them, you know, working out what you think the opportunity might be protecting them a lot of work, obviously, with patent attorneys, exploring the opportunities, that very little effort is going into the marketing. And sometimes very little to zero, is going into the deals. And you can think of this in terms of at the end of every day, at the end of every week, and month. And then Gosh, it's a whole year has gone by. We've done a whole lot of this. We've done a whole lot of great fun stuff, talking to the academics evaluating things, lots of stuff, filing patents, but have we done any deals? Have we been out to the market? Have we been talking about possible deal structures, et cetera? And so the point here with reference to this graph, is, you know, to think, in stages, I guess, what resources do you have? How are they allocated to your projects? How do you actually monitor this? What sort of systems do you have in place to look at your office projects portfolio? And what stage they're at? And are they moving through it? And are we putting enough effort into the right stages across the whole spread of the tech transfer process. And so that's the first one of these things that I think is important to get right. So I'm going to stop sharing. Now. If I can. Come back to you all, and Sammy. Hello. And see if we've got any comments or questions. Yeah.

Speaker 1  24:25  
And attendees, don't forget that you can type in questions into the q&a button box or the chat option. I can get us started. Tom, would you share a little bit more on some strategies for dividing the tasks among your team to staff so that, you know we can address the full spectrum?

Speaker 2  24:46  
Yeah, yeah, sure. I mean, I think I think a lot depends on the size of your office. You know, if you're one person if you're 50 people, but I think my experience from Oxford was was that As we grew, we could bring in more and more specialist staff. But nevertheless, at the heart of the organization was what we originally called project managers, and they became tech transfer managers. And now I think they call them licensing and spin out managers. But the tech transfer manager, I think one of the really interesting questions when you think about how to allocate your people to different activities on the project progression is what is often termed in the jargon. You no comparison between a buyer's and seller's model, and a cradle to grave model. So what do I mean? So cradle to grave is you have a tech transfer project manager, who is assigned to the project right at the start, and manages the project all the way through and stays as the project manager during the evaluation during the patenting with help doing the marketing with help, depending on the size of the office. And the great advantage of that is that the the academic inventors, the researchers involved, they have a relationship with one person throughout the process. And that's very beneficial to them. The slight disadvantage you may think is, well, you know, how can we have a single person who's capable of doing all of those different stages? So why don't we have a group of people, some of whom are sort of buyers. So they're interfacing with the academics, and they're buying, obviously not for money, but they're buying the they're attracting the disclosures from the academics, and they're really good at those early stages. But then they hand over to some sellers, some people who are good at the marketing deal making negotiation phases. And I think that is a is a question that was being discussed and debated 20 years ago, and is probably still being talked about today. I think, a happy sort of solution to this is is you know, you're trying to do both, you have your project manager assigned to the project who stays with that project all the way through. So the academic gets to know the project manager. And it's a really close relationship. And they can always phone up and say what's happening. But that project manager is not working on their own not working in isolation. And is building teams which evolve within the office, depending on what stage they're at. So they bring in colleagues and it becomes a team effort around a project. But there's always the one project manager. So that's, you know, that's a way of thinking about that one.

Unknown Speaker  27:56  
I can't hear you, Sammy.

Speaker 1  27:59  
Sorry, I muted myself, I don't see any other questions that have been submitted just yet. So I think that we are okay to, to push on. And, again, attendees, if you think of questions related to this section, feel free to submit those even though we're going forward, we can always come back to it as well. Okay,

Speaker 2  28:15  
good. So I'll share screen again. And come to the second area. So this is about the innovation community. Now, what's that all about? And the idea here is just to spend a few minutes and encouraging you to think about your innovation community and describe it. And, you know, assess it. So this is a diagram I use to present you, with your innovation community, and you're in the middle of it. Because that's the way as humans, we tend to think we're all ego centric, one way or another. And to think, Okay, this is us in our DTOs in our jobs in our universities, who do we need to know? Who do we need to have relationships with in order to be able to do our job of tech transfer? And you can spend a couple of minutes looking at all of these boxes. And you can think yeah, okay, so I understand why we need links with these people with those people don't understand some of it and maybe you know, if you've if you see boxes with people in there, you think hang on why? Why do I want to know that? Then please do put that in the q&a. And a few observations to make I mean, of course, there are many more Many types of organizations, institutions here, a lot of very different types. And thinking about how you're going to build relationships with all of these people is important. And I also often sort of throw out as, as an observation is, is there anything missing, and I've had some fantastic responses to that from around the world, because innovation communities operate in very different ways around the world. So in some one place, I was giving a talk, and I said, who you are, here's what's missing, and somebody said, the Catholic Church, because in that place, the church as an institution was genuinely at the center of so much of what evolved in society. So it was really important to have good networks and links there as a social organization that you could benefit from connecting with, because that's kind of how quite a lot of stuff happened. Another answer I had in another part of the world, was the mafia. And I thought, Gosh, this is interesting. But again, it was a reflection of the way sis society worked in that place, if you wanted to get things done, you know, for better or for worse, but obviously, for worse, generally, you know, being in touch with the organized crime syndicate was important. Now, for us, for me in the UK. And for you over there, I doubt either of those are important. But there may be other things that are missing. And I'd love to hear your your thoughts on that. So I'll come back to this picture in a minute. But I wanted to make another point, which is, in talking about the innovation community, it's a deliberate response to not talking about innovation ecosystems. And we hear about innovation ecosystems all of the time. And everyone's talking about their ecosystem. And that's fine in the sense that I think the ecosystem concept for innovation does does have some value when you're thinking about the whole combination of institutions, or triple helix concepts of government, industry, university, etc. But my problem with the ecosystem concept is that if you look at any picture of an ecosystem you you search for, it involves entities killing and eating each other. And I don't think that's a very good way of going about doing tech transfer. So I think it's better to think of what we're doing as a community. And do we know the neighbors in our community? Now, you may think this is a light, irrelevant point. But I think if we could shift from ecosystem sort of system thinking to communities, we may then be able to see this more as a people to people activity and work out who it is in our innovation communities, we really want to get in touch with. So you sit there and say, Okay, how do I build my innovation community? And the immediate answer is you have a party, you build the network. And, again, the response I have many, many times to this is, you know, how do you go about doing this? Have a party, build a network, so that you can think, you know, which of these people? Which of these people do I know? Which Don't say no, why do I want to know them? And recognize that, whilst on this chart, it's a bunch of boxes, you know, in fact, it's a whole group of people. And see this as a community of people. Now, the example that we had in Oxford for this was the Oxford innovation society. And this was set up in 1990. So a long time ago, and it's still going. And it's a membership society where membership organizations pay $10,000 A year roughly. And that number hasn't changed for a very long time. There is now a sort of dual membership for big organizations. In small organizations, and organizations would join, they may be professional services firms, like patent attorneys, or banking or accountants or whatever. But people involved in the Oxford innovation community. And three times a year, we'd hold a big event, about 130 people, where we'd have some academic talk, some business talks, we then have some drinks and dinner in one of the Oxford colleges, and then more drinks, and it was just a great way to bring the community together. And for them to get to know each other as people. And I think this business of of having events, having parties, recognizing that universities are very powerful, or have have very high convening power. So I think if universities invite people to things they tend to people tend to come. And that's an interesting one, I think, for a variety of reasons. So use the convening power of the institution, and have events, they don't have to look like the previous one, you could always have a slightly more fun event that looks a bit like this, these days. But nevertheless, think about what what might work for you. So again, the actions on this one, who do you know, who do you not know? And that diagram I've shown can just be a starting point for you. But usually, you can just list them out Who do I know in these places? Who's missing? Who do we let's have a bit of a plan. Which of these groups do we want to get to know better? How are we going to do that? And think, what sort of events are we holding? But we're also what sort of events are we attending? Because your community is not just the people who come to you, it's the places you go, and all the events that you get involved in? And within your office? And, you know, I, I think one has to recognize this, there will be some people who are better at parties than others. There are some people who are more socially interactive, and gregarious or whatever other word you want to use. And you know, I think recognize that and use that. And they're the people you can send out to other events, and they're the people who can host events that you're holding. So, again, I'll pause here, I'll cut I'll stop sharing, and hopefully we can discuss some of that. There's a little question here, Sammy, so yes,

Speaker 1  37:48  
there is it's actually going back to the first section, if you want to visit that first. The question submitted says as a T to Director, what are effective strategies to ensure the proper allocation of project management resources, and to monitor the progress the progress of projects as they move through that process?

Speaker 2  38:09  
Yeah, well, thank you for the question. I mean, I mean, as a teacher director, as, as you say, I mean, you have to have a database system, which is gathering this information for you. Now. At the start, a database system can just be a piece of paper and a pen, it can become a spreadsheet, then it can involve evolve into your own access database, or whatever. But then depending on the size of the office, you're probably going to get one of these tech transfer project management databases. But what what we used to do, we call it the graphic equalizer, I don't know if any of you remember these music amplifiers that would show all the different bits of music going up and down. And we would see for each project manager, and then for each team, and for the company as a whole. How many projects did they have at each stage? So you know, you define some stages, identify, evaluate, protect, market, whatever. How many projects did they have at each stage as individuals, because that's quite important and interesting to see. But then as groups, because you might have the physical sciences group and the life sciences group, and as a company as a whole. And you can quite quickly get a visual representation of what stage are our projects at now. And let's say we're just starting there. So let's get a snapshot now. And maybe they're spread quite nice and you think that's great, that's nice. We're doing okay, maybe they're not. And so then over time, you can begin to assess are they moving through One by one, project managers, some of them might be better at moving them along than others, what are the issues there actually are some people being asked to do tasks they're really not good at. So they're not doing them because you sort of tend to do what you're good at and not be what you're not so good at. So there may be some, either management issues there, or just some allocation issues. And, you know, monitor how things are progressing. And for me, this was the main job. Well, I'd say one part of the, one of the main parts of the job of being the TTA, Director, are we moving stuff through? Now you sort of get a feel for it, because you can count the number of deals that you're signing. But I think you want to make sure that overall, things are moving through. And in groups, but also individuals are moving their projects through or not, and thinking about what sort of models we have this cradle to grave buyers and sellers, if we got the right people doing the right stuff. And you can use that sort of business information analysis, to spot issues.

Speaker 1  41:19  
Thank you, um, and outside for perception to outside of maybe some tips and tricks for connecting with the mafia. I'm not sure that this is the appropriate venue for those any general comments or ideas on where to start with building this innovation community?

Speaker 2  41:37  
Yeah, yeah. I mean, I, I'd be very interested in comments from the audience's as well as to, you know, whether you think this is useful? I mean, is it? Is it so obvious? Don't be dumb. We don't need telling this. This is what we do. Is it? Is it useful? Is it is it kind of wrong. But the reason I present this is because it's what I see tech transfer offices not doing. And, you know, a lot of it is because there's so much administrative work involved with in tech transfer, that it's quite easy to just keep your heads down and not get out there. So what do you do? How do you get out there? And I say, have a party. Now. It's not, I mean, great, great if it's a party, but probably it's what you might call a professional business networking event, or something very boring like that. But it's a party view it as a party. And, you know, as I said on one of those slides, so people say, but I don't want to have a party, I don't want to do events. I don't like events, I'm not good at organizing events. And people come up with whole bunches of reasons for not doing it. But it's simple. You need a date, an invitation list a venue. And you can usually work out at a date, you can usually find a venue in universities, we There's hundreds of them around. People often get stuck at the invitation list, who should we invite? Well, look, it's not going to be perfect, but start, then people say, but we haven't got any money. And that's a real point. You know, these things cost money, not very much, actually. But they do cost a bit of money. Very often, it's it's very straightforward to find sponsorship, patent attorney, firms, law firms, investment firms, they want to sponsor these things. And off you go. And the first time you do this will not be as good as the second time you do it, or the third time, but you can't do it the second time unless you've done it the first time. And it's so it's kind of like, okay, guys, we got to we've got to do this, we've got to really start this kind of networking event. And I think the other comment I'd make is this point about, look at the people in your organization, some of them are better at their social interaction stuff than others, and use them to deploy them. And this is again, part of the broader resource allocation. Who have we got doing what and just because somebody is a sort of, you know, head of whatever, doesn't mean they're great in the social interaction, community building stuff. So recognize that it's not a problem. It's just see it and go from there.

Speaker 1  44:34  
Thank you. I think we're all set on the question so far, so we are good to keep moving ahead.

Speaker 2  44:39  
Okay, great. Well, let's have the third one. So the third one is university alignment. So what's this all about? So, to what extent are the activities of the tech transfer office, your tech transfer is aligned with university objectives and supporting the university in its reputation management. Now, I think a great way of thinking about this is to focus in on the purpose of your tech transfer office. What is the purpose of your tech transfer office? And you may well have a very clear written answer to that, or you may not. And I encourage you to have a clear written answer to this. And don't keep it to yourself, you know, share it with the university and see what they say, Yes, does that align with what they want you to be doing? And it's all about this point of alignment? is, are you doing? What they want you to do? And is there a good connection between those because you are part of the university, they own you? Even I know, most US outfits are administered off administrative offices. So that's a fairly sort of clear point. But you sometimes see tech transfer offices, getting a little bit independence a little bit carried away with themselves and forgetting that they're owned by the university part of the university. And does the university know what you're doing? Do you know what they want you to do? And writing these things down is a good thing. And the reason I focus in on this is that one of the major problems I see in university tech transfer offices around the world is what I would describe as the what then how problem. So question one, you know, what do we want? What do we want to achieve? What are our objectives? Okay, question two, how can we go about doing that? How can we achieve what what it is that you want to do? And usually, universities get this wrong, they they forget about question one. And they spend a lot of time on question two, or they spend a lot of time on question two, forgetting that they actually first need to really think about the objectives. And this is why, in my opinion, this is why tech transfer. Sometimes the relationship between the tech transfer office and the academics and the university leadership and administration get strained. Because there's been too much focus on how do we do it not enough focus on what are our objectives. So what I say, in general, is the purpose of university technology transfer. And this is just an example. I mean, yours will be different. That's no problem. Transfer university research results from the university out to businesses, where the results are developed into new products and services that benefit society. Now, it's a form of words. But once you've written it down, you can then debate it, you can then think about how to change it. In Oxford, way back 20 years ago, the purpose of the Technology Transfer Office and this was very clearly written down, was the Technology Transfer Office helps researchers who want to commercialize the results of their research. And I think this is a fantastic way of thinking about technology transfer and the role of the tech transfer office, because it positions it so clearly as helping researchers. And the reason that's important is because it's the researchers who get to define what help is. So are you actually helping them do something they want to do, in this case, commercialize, because certainly back then the focus was very much on commercial tech transfer. Now, today, you may reposition this as most of knowledge transfer brought broader based. Another way of thinking about this and the way the conversation is held is, is what's the balance between income and impact? So are we trying to generate income? Or are we trying to generate impact? And asking the university that question, what do you want us to do? What are your objectives? You want to set the tech transfer office because depending on where you are on this spectrum, we will behave differently is very important. I think income impact is a useful framework but potentially false to pay. If you're generating lots of income through your licensing or spin out activities. Are you creating impact? Well, yes Probably almost certainly because what are you getting the money for your royalties on products sold, or services benefited? Or spin out shareholding realizations on economic growth? If you're generating lots of impact, are you getting lots of money? Not necessarily. Because these might be low commercial value, but high social value activities. And I think there's the point we all know, in tech transfer that you don't know at the tech transfer stage, you know, we can do all the evaluation and assessment that we like, we can have an opinion, we can guess which of these things is valuable or not. We don't actually know what's going to go on and be successful in the marketplace. Hence, this focus on on doing the deals. I think another way of addressing this alignment question is thinking who wants what? So who's involved. So in your tech transfer office, you've got you. Maybe you're the boss, whatever, you've got the staff, you've got the university. But also you've got everybody outside industry, investors, government, society, almost everybody's got an opinion. All of these different types of people. And this is the complexity of our job is trying to address or well first of all understand and then satisfy the demands of all of these different groups on the tech transfer function in a university. And what do they want? So again, just using this income impact framework, on the income side, do they want royalties spin out shares research funding, on the impact side, reputation stories? You Yeah, potentially thinking about your fit for autumn, the autumn Better World project, more locally in the university, I think reputation is a really important part of this. And I think that if one of the things universities care about most is their reputation, and the leadership of the university compare, are interested most in the reputation of their institution. And this is reflected in all sorts of ways including university rankings, it's affected in dinner conversations that the President and Provost and Vice Chancellors are having, all of the time. And I think this is where the tech transfer office can can begin to get some wins is thinking how you connect how your activities connect to the reputation of the institution. And this sort of touches on the challenge we face with the whole measurement piece, all the sort of metrics that we have to think about and report to, through the autumn survey or to government in different ways, in the stories we can tell about either COVID vaccines or there's apple that is apple that's been bred in Belgium at KU Leuven, and is now hundreds of 1000s, or millions of these are sold around the world. So we've got this great opportunity to satisfy the different communities by talking about the numbers and the narratives. And we know what's more, appealing in most audiences is is the narratives. So on this, I think it's just a question of thinking. Do you know your university's objectives in relation to innovation, entrepreneurship, knowledge, transfer, impact, better world, etc? Have they written it down? Have you read it? Do you talk about these things? Do you have that conversation? Thinking about where your activities fit with their activities? And its how does tech transfer generally fit in? Does the university care about this? And then how do you the tech transfer office fit in? And it's simple question How well do you know the communications office or press office in the President's administration team? Are you feeding them stories? And I think that where there's can be challenges and difficulties is think about how you're communicating within your institution. But also think about how you're communicating

Speaker 2  54:39  
to your press office so they can communicate and broadcast what you're doing more widely. So I will just pause again there, Sammy, in case there's any other comments, and I see there is one but in fact, actually no I had one more slide on this which is quite entertaining, so stay there. So, this this also touches University alignment on Office reviews. So the you'd have one day the university president says to the tech transfer office, you know, we're thinking of reviewing your office. And the tech transfer office directors response is, oh, shall I resign now to save you the trouble, because usually these office reviews are used to try to get some sort of specific outcome. And that's a problem. And that's bad. So and I've chatted to many people over the dorsum meetings over the years to No, this is real in your country as well. So I think make them routine, irregular, but not frequent, make them positive, and make sure they've got a sort of forward looking purpose. But I'll stop sharing now come back. And we have a, I can see a chat. Here we go.

Speaker 1  56:02  
Our chat was a comment from one of our attendees, just sharing similar positive experience from hosting celebratory events. So that is great. And thank you for sharing that. That is also working for your office. For this section for Section three, I'm sure many of our attendees can relate to feeling like their university doesn't necessarily know exactly what they want from their to, can you? Or like, how if the university has some expectations on what the TTL should be saying? Can you share a little bit more about that, or any experience you have with that?

Speaker 2  56:38  
Yeah, I think just briefly, I think recognize it is an iterative process. And if if you if you're sort of starting from scratch, and it's it's not clear what they want, I think, yeah, the obligation is on you to write it down. But then share it with them and say, Look, this is a draft, what do you think? Is this what you want? And it will inevitably find its way around the universities? Sort of by Zan, tine can committee structure. But I think it's important to engage like that, because we we know why we think we know why we're doing what we do. We think we get what tech transfer is all about. But why should they. And so often, they just don't. And some where there's a committee with a professor of the history of art in there, or archaeology or whatever. And she's part of your university. And she cares what you're doing. Like you care what she's doing, because you're all part of the same institution. And so you make, it's okay, that this travels through all of the committee's with people you don't think are interesting, because they probably are, because they care about the institution. But I mean, the short answer, Sam is write it down. And then recognize it iterative.

Speaker 1  57:57  
Thank you, community building internally as well as externally. Next point.

Speaker 2  58:02  
So so just finally, I wanted to show you a few final slides. So looking ahead. I think we've, this is where my sort of current exploratory thinking is on tech transfer. Is this question, what do we really care about? What do you really care about? And I think that tech transfer got itself behind by focusing too much on the metrics too much on the numbers and talking about disclosures and patent filings and deals and licensing income. And was quite late to telling stories, the narrative side of this, which actually connects to humans, and also I think we're a bit slow, going the next step, and trying to connect what we're doing with what people really care about. And so I think this is interesting, what times higher education are doing on impact rankings, which is all about connecting universities activities with the UN Sustainable Development Goals. And if you're asking the question, what do you really care about? The answer is probably somewhere on this on this slide, in one of these boxes, and there'll be different things for different people. But I think we're bad at talking about how we impact in a positive way. How we have a positive effects on climate change. We might talk about some really exciting electric motor technology we've got are some WIZO recycling tech, but we don't convert that into the way that discussion is being held in in public in general, tons of carbon captured reduction of emissions. So I think we want to go the next step and think, what technologies are we transferring? And tell the story is not about the tech but about the impact on society. And you can then take that to other areas of gender diversity. So, you know, there's there's issues here about, have you got good quality, diversity inclusion practices in your office, governance committees, etc in the institution. But also, are there any technologies or projects were involved in, that have a positive effect on gender diversity issues? What stories? Are you telling about that? And you can take that to race? What are you doing about racial diversity? Now? You know, we've all got different opinions about which of these UN Sustainable Development Goal issues may be more or less important at different times, different stages of life, different experiences. But, you know, on this one, which is important, what are we actually doing about racial diversity in the tech transfer community? Now, again, it's our staffing. It's our governance, it's our committees. And we've got to get that right. We've got to improve on that for sure. But then we can think beyond that, too. In terms of the actual job we're doing, are we addressing racial diversity issues in any positive way? At all? What stories could we tell about that, and that was the thinking that led to a group of us setting up get it, please do look at the website, please do get involved. Because that's where I'm spending quite a lot of my time at the moment. There's a lot of resources on there. And I encourage you to have a look, which brings me to the end. So I will stop sharing again, Sammy, for the final time, and come back to you all and happy to listen to any comments anybody may want to make. Who's still with us, including? Yes,

Speaker 1  1:01:59  
we'll give them we'll give folks a minute to submit any final questions on the q&a or the chat. But this has been very comprehensive Tom. So I wouldn't be surprised if we've preempted a lot of questions that may have been asked as well. I always like to ask about kind of, in this moment, what we're waiting for any final questions, any big final takeaways that you want to impart for our attendees key things to be thinking about as they go back to their offices, some future trends, anything like that, that you want to kind of share some final final thoughts or wisdom to our to our attendees? I

Speaker 2  1:02:36  
think thank you, Sammy, I think future trends is always worth thinking about. And those last few comments I was making about. I think it's now the time for the tech transfer community to begin to see itself in the broader world. And you know, we've gone through counting disclosures, we've gone through the Better World project, we were doing impact where we've gotten a lot better at this. But I still think we're telling the stories in too techie away. And I think working together with our universities, hence this alignment thing, and managing projects effectively. Hence that piece and recognizing the community we exist in to go to a next stage. And you can use the UN SDGs or any other sort of framework, you want to go to the next stage and, and really connect what we do, which is so amazing, and so wonderful and such fun, really connect that with what the world cares about.

Speaker 1  1:03:41  
That's great, great way to to close this out, too. I think that I'm not seeing any other questions or comments filled in. But I think that's a really nice, big picture way to to wrap things up today. So on behalf of autumn, I just want to thank you, Tom for such an informative discussion. And thank all of our attendees for joining today. As a reminder, a recording of the webinar will be available on the autumn Learning Center before the end of the week, including a handout of today's presentation slides so you'll have all of those as a reference. And please don't forget to fill out our evaluation that will pop up when you sign out of the webinar today. It really helps us serve your needs in the future. So again, thank you. Thank you, attendees. Thank you Tom so much and I hope that everyone has a great rest of their mornings, afternoons evenings, wherever you may be joining us today

Transcribed by https://otter.ai