The new German Agency for Transfer and Innovation (DATI) will help the academic research base to create spinouts.
Germany’s new government plans to set up a national technology transfer agency, according to news provider Science Business.
Bettina Stark-Watzinger (pictured), the incoming education and research minister and a former research manager, agreed to set up the German Agency for Transfer and Innovation (DATI), according to the 178-page coalition agreement, Mehr Fortschritt Wagen (“Dare to make more progress”), released last week by the three parties making up the new government – the centre-left Social Democratic Party (SPD), the Greens and centre-right Free Democratic Party (FDP).
DATI will help the academic research base to create spinouts in line with advisory committee recommendations that current complicated funding programmes and bureaucracy, such as through the Federal Agency for Disruptive Innovation (SPRIN-D) launched in 2019, tended to stifle German spinouts, Science Business said.
As well as setting up DATI, the coalition agreement said the new government would also “immediately [and] substantially improve the legal and financial framework” for SPRIN-D under director Rafael Laguna de la Vera.
DATI will primarily work with universities of applied sciences and smaller universities and unite and expand different funding schemes from different government departments.
Researchers could then collaborate with regional startups and businesses to get funding to bring new ideas to the market. Germany’s Federal Minister for Economic Affairs and Energy (BMWi) last year targeted improving the innovator ratio, which is the proportion of enterprises that have launched at least one product or process innovation within a three-year reference period, by increasing research and development (R&D) spending by small and medium-sized enterprises.
Large companies had accounted for the bulk of the increasing R&D spending over recent years while SME spending had stagnated, according to BMWi.
Germany will spend 3.5% of gross domestic product on R&D by 2025, the agreement promises, above the 3% target reiterated earlier this year by the European Commission.
Photo courtesy of LinkedIn
