Pooling tech transfer resources could help smaller universities commercialise technology that they can't push out on their own.
Could universities — especially smaller ones — commercialise their innovative research more efficiently if they pooled their resources? This is something several UK universities are testing out in pilot projects across different parts of the country.
In May last year, Research England, the funding body for university research and knowledge transfer in England, launched a funding call to develop joint tech transfer offices which could help smaller institutions to develop ways to commercialise their intellectual property. The University of the Arts London was the lead on one successful application, securing capital for a six-month pilot project that will specifically focus on commercialising social sciences.
By pooling resources, smaller, more cash-strapped universities can spread the costs of technology transfer. As more universities face financial trouble because of declining revenues from tuition fees — particularly from a drop in enrolment from foreign students who pay higher charges than domestic students — joint tech transfer offices are likely to proliferate.
Another joint tech transfer project is being run by Chris Worrall, head of innovation at the University of Portsmouth in the UK. The project, called Bridging the Gap: A Shared Technology Transfer Office Vision for Wessex, brings together a group of universities in southwestern England, including the University of Chichester, Solent University, Arts University Bournemouth and AECC University College.
Worrall says while the researchers at these institutions are as good as those at bigger universities, “we have an institutional failing to really support them and provide a full spectrum tech transfer office.”
There are multiple challenges the group is trying to address. “There’s a lack of ability to exploit our research outputs because we’re resource-constrained, there’s a lack of visibility and appreciation of commercial value, and there’s insufficient expertise throughout the stages”.
The University of Manchester, in the north of the UK, meanwhile, partnered with three other academic institutions in the same city to pool tech transfer resources and expertise.
“Collectively we want to see how we can grow and scale commercialisation activity and culture across our region,” says Catherine Headley, interim chief executive of the University of Manchester Innovation Factory, the commercialisation arm of the University of Manchester. Headley leads the Manchester Salford Commercialisation Consortium, which groups tech transfer activities among the Manchester Metropolitan University, the University of Salford and the Royal Northern College of Music.
The partnership builds on an existing approach to sharing resources: the universities of Manchester and Salford joined forces in 2021 to pool their tech transfer expertise, with Salford’s faculty able to use the larger University of Manchester Innovation Factory team via a service-level agreement between the two institutions.
The expanded Manchester Salford Commercialisation Consortium is pursuing a regional play, aiming to drive economic impact throughout the Greater Manchester region. The group is driven primarily by the needs of the smaller institutions, Headley says, and the offering includes everything from workshops to events.
The University of Manchester Innovation Factory is also opening its networks and investor connections to others in the group. “The ultimate output that we want from the programme is to expand that service-level agreement across all of the partners to formalise the arrangement and make it long-standing, beyond the six months of the programme.”
Finding value in existing IP is key
Pooling tech transfer resources isn’t primarily about going after the new inventions that might come through the door. It allows universities to look at what intellectual property they already have that has not been commercialised yet.
“We think there’s plenty in the war chest which we can look at and start to exploit,” Worrall says. “We want to create a shared pipeline of opportunities and work on them together as a group, and we want to widen participation in the commercialisation process.”
“It’s unlikely that a small institution such as ours will create a massive TTO,” he says. Instead, the opportunity is to involve academics in the tech transfer process and create a “leaner model” of a commercialisation office that relies a lot on external partners such as law firms, investors and consultants.
Jonathan Knight, vice president for enterprise at the University of Bath in the UK, leads the SpinoutWest programme, one of the larger pilots that received funding from Research England. SpinoutWest includes small universities such as Bath Spa University, the University of the West of England and the University of Gloucestershire. Local government and and venture investors are also members, including West of England Combined Authority, the Royal United Hospitals Bath NHS Foundation Trust, Angel Investors Bristol, enterprise partnership SETsquared and venture capital firm QantX.
SpinoutWest focuses on health and social care — hence the inclusion of a UK National Health Service organisational group — because it recognises that the UK’s National Health Service (NHS) faces similar commercialisation challenges as universities, says Knight. “True innovation is often suppressed within the NHS and we want to enable those innovative individuals in the NHS, often in a secondary hospital environment, to have access to tech transfer support so that their ideas can be realised,” he says.
The group’s main activities include audit existing intellectual property. Knight says he’s particularly focused on making the programme last beyond the pilot. “When the funding ends, is the project going to continue? That’s why we’ve been focused on culture change,” he says.
