Max Planck Innovation, Procter & Gamble and the Catholic University of Leuven scooped the main prizes at the IPTEC annual meeting on 11 and 12 June 2008 in Frankfurt.
The meeting is designed to assist companies and organisations to develop business through technology transfer and acts as a meeting point for multinational companies, SMEs, universities and public sector organisations.
Procter & Gamble was presented with the private-sector award in recognition of its shift from closed to open innovation, which started in 2001. IPTEC selected P&G from a shortlist that also included ARM, Cancer Research Technology, Dolby, EMBL, HP, Qualicomm, Smart Materials and Texas Instruments.
Max Planck Innovation received the public-sector institution award. The German technology transfer organisation supports and advises scientists of the Max Planck Society on intellectual property, evaluating 150 inventions annually and managing more than 1,500 licences. Its shortlisted rivals for the award were the Fraunhofer Institute, the National Institutes of Health and the Wellcome Trust.
Jörn Erselius, Managing Director of Max Planck Innovation, said: “We are honored to be recognised for our commitment to professional technology transfer. More than 30 years technology transfer for the Max Planck Society clearly show that excellent basic research generates pioneering inventions that can change people’s lives. But we have also learnt that it takes a lot of patience and perseverance to exploit the economic and social benefits of inventions. It therefore remains a major ambition of our team to work with investors, industry and technology transfer professionals to create new instruments that help overcome the so-called ‘innovation gap’ between early-stage research projects and industrial development.”
The third award went to the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium for university technology transfer. IPTEC selected this institution from a shortlist that included Imperial Innovations in the UK, and MIT, Columbia University, and Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation in the US.
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