“Experience and challenges of
technology transfer in life science”
Dr Claude Kaplan
Senior Consultant
IP Pragmatics Ltd
Agenda
• Who are IP Pragmatics
• Technology transfer: Transactional risks
• Reducing the barriers
– Raising awareness – Active marketing
– Building strategic relationships
• Summary
Who are IP Pragmatics
• We help Universities, Government Research institutes and SMEs exploit their intellectual property
• Experienced team with >50 years experience of successful early stage technology transfer support
• Core areas of business expertise:
– Agriculture and plant sciences incl. plant biotechnology – Microbial biotechnology
– Food biotechnology – Animal health
– General life science research tools – Diagnostics (clinical & veterinary)
• Geographical focus
– UK – EU
Transferring technology in / out of Japan
Out: EU Universities & government research institutes
In: Japanese companies
Transferring technology in / out of Japan
Out: Japanese government research institutes (JST & AIST)
In: EU and US companies
Selling technologies
• From the perspective of the technology acquirer there are 3 key risks:
1. Technology risk
– “Will the technology do what it says it will do?”
2. Market risk
– “Will I will be able to may money from it?”
3. Transactional risk
– “Can we form a relationship with the technology provider?”
• Competing against other opportunities
– Companies are generally time / finance / people limited NOT opportunity limited
Selling technologies
• Need all 3 for success:
• Without reducing Transactional Risk
– Technology buyers / sellers never meet – Effort required prevents “doing a deal”
– Inhibits long term relationship
RISK
TECHNOLOGY MARKET TRANSACTION
8 9 9
9 8 9
9 9 8
Factors in Transactional risk
TRANSACTIONAL RISK
Culture Language
Physical distance
Time zone
Awareness Previous
experience
Reducing the barriers
• Raising awareness
• Active marketing
• Building strategic relationships
Raising awareness
UNAWARE AWARE INTEREST
DESIRE AQUIRE
Web Presence
Web presence
• Three key factors
– Quick / easy navigation
– Customer focused
• Separate business / academic interests
– Contact person for follow up
Active marketing
• Web sites only raise awareness / interest
– No body ever buys technology from a website
• Technology exploitation is not about technology its about forming relationships
• The only way to sell technologies is to meet customers regularly
– Find out if there is genuine interest – Shapes technology to market needs
– Builds presence and awareness of other technologies / capabilities
– Builds trust and future opportunity
Raising awareness
UNAWARE AWARE INTEREST
DESIRE AQUIRE
Web Presence
Active Marketing
UK TTOs capability
• 2006: UK spend on TTOs = £110m!
• A recent Commercialisation Survey of 124 UK TTOs:
– Employed 752 tech transfer people
• 52% had 0 – 4 people
• 15% had none
– 67% did not file any patents
– 47% did not execute any licenses – License income = £180k/institute
• 70% produced less then £50k income – 1.3 spin outs created per institute
• 57% produced none – 20 spin-outs were exited
• 75% went into liquidation
Active marketing
• The biggest failure of TTOs in UK / EU is that they don’t meet companies enough
• Number of factors:
– Skills of tech transfer executives
• Limited commercial experience
• Limited market contacts
• More comfortable talking to scientists
– Limited funding for marketing activities
– Lack of trust of tech transfer executives – hierarchical nature of universities
Build strategic relationship
• This is too complex (and important) to do alone
• Form long term relationships
– Between different technology providers
• Pool IP
• Co-market
– With market players
• Meet regularly
• Discuss new ideas, opportunities, collaborations
– Market focused networks
• Knowledge Transfer Networks
– Technology brokers
• Support services in / outside Japan and Rest of the World
Transferring technology in / out of Japan
COMPANY A COMPANY B
JST or AIST
Summary
• Technology transfer is NOT about technology its about relationships
• Technology providers (and technology acquirers) need to minimise barriers to doing business
• Communication, communication, communication