Tech transfer thriving in US universities

The question of how Europe is doing in comparison is a hard one to answer, because currently there are few data on which to base a judgement. Not only that, the data that do exist are inconsistent – with, for example, five different definitions of what constitutes a spin-off company.

Now AUTM has joined forces with its international counterparts in Canada and the UK to try to agree standard metrics for assessing technology transfer. It is hoped to extend the scope of this work to take in other countries.

Overall there were 228 respondents to AUTM’s 2005 survey, published last month.

Highlights of the survey include:

• There was more than US$42 billion in R&D expenditures at US academic centres.
  
  
• Some 151 organisations introduced 527 new products into the market in 2005, making a total 3,641 products introduced from 1998 to 2005.
  
  
• There were 628 new spin-off companies created in 2005, to bring the total to 5,171 since 1980.
  
  
• Total research support from all external sources is stable, with an increase of only US$1.1 billion to US$42.3 billion over 2004 data. That’s the smallest increase since 1996.
  
  
• The percentage of support from federal versus industrial sources remained constant, with 67 per cent federal funding and 7 per cent industry funding.
  
  
• Invention disclosures received continued to rise to 17,382, up 571 or 3.5 per cent from the previous survey in 2004.
  
  
• Total US patent applications increased to 15,115 in 2005, up from 13,803 in 2004, but total US patents issued declined to 3,278 in 2005 from 3,680 in 2004.
  
  
• Funding from individual angel investors, Small Business Innovation Research/Small Business Technology Transfer Program grants and from the licensing institution for start-up companies increased significantly over the 2004 data.
  
  
• There are 28,349 active licences, with each single licence representing a one-on-one relationship between a company and a university.
  
  
• 4,932 new licences were signed in 2005.

Almost two companies created a day

“Some 1.7 companies are created every day, and 1.25 products based on academic inventions were introduced every single day for the last eight years,” said Dana Bostrom, editor of the survey. “It’s important that we as a society understand just how important the role of technology is in our everyday lives.” AUTM recently released summaries of the US and Canadian 2005 licensing surveys.

Because of the international nature of technology transfer, AUTM is currently working with the Alliance for the Commercialization of Canadian Technology (ACCT)  and the University Companies Association (UNICO) in the United Kingdom to analyse metrics and survey instruments used in academic technology transfer. The group plans to iron out differences in definitions and define and deploy metrics that can help compare surveys from various geographies. The AUTM licensing survey tells how well the profession is doing. UNICO put out a similar survey last year.

“There are similar trends in the United States and Europe, though the scale in the United States is larger. There has been an increase in the number of licenses and products and in the scale of activity. Everything is heading in the same direction, which is upwards,” said Kevin Cullen, director of Research & Enterprise at the University of Glasgow, about the 2005 AUTM survey. Cullen also is a member of the board of UNICO and vice president of membership for AUTM.

The trouble with metrics

The joint US–Canadian–European project aims to come out with some definitions and parameters for next-generation metrics. Cullen explained that metrics are used for two things: for institution-to-institution comparisons and for socioeconomic benefits.

“We want to paint a broader picture of technology transfer than the royalty deals we use now, for example, to assess the economic impact of technology transfer into the economy,” he said.

One example he cites is paediatric ultrasound, which was developed at the University of Glasgow. A number of companies developed the technology, but the university received no royalty income. “Some people might say this is a failure. But it was a big success. Every mother in the developed world gets this procedure,” Cullen said. “Not to mention how many babies’ lives are saved each year. That data has not been collected historically by technology transfer offices at universities. We don’t know how to measure this, so we are now looking at the older technology that was transferred, because some information is now available.”

There are a number of challenges in measuring the value of technology transfer: there are different definitions in different countries about components of technology transfer such as what constitutes a spin-off company, there are differences in what types of organisations contribute to sponsored research, plus there are all sorts of different technologies transferred.

Currently, the UNICO and the Association of European Science & Technology Transfer Professionals or ASTP surveys are based on the AUTM survey, even though individual definitions within those surveys may vary.

“As time goes on, we are getting closer to getting comparable information,” Cullen said. “Currently definitions vary country-to-country, for example, the definition of sponsored research in the United States probably is different than the definition in the United Kingdom. So you’re comparing apples to pears. This includes who is considered a sponsor. Different parts of the government in the United States would be sponsors versus in the United Kingdom.”

AUTM and UNICO and others are working to make common the different definitions. “By the end of spring, we hope to have the key ones sorted out,” he said, adding that he’s seen at least five different definitions of a spin-off company.

“We are looking to come up with the next generation of metrics, which is a difficult challenge,” he said. “In the future we would like a combined survey usable by UNICO, AUTM and ASTP.”

He said the US–Canadian–European group needs to look at what the real objects are of technology transfer success, what success looks like and then how to measure that success. “Economic development and the public good don’t sit comfortably together,” he said. Eventually, the hope to get Asia involved. Getting the metrics together with Canada, the United States and Europe alone is a “few-year effort”, he said. “I hope that within one year we are close to having an outline proposal on metrics.”

Cullen will chair a session at the upcoming UNICO meeting in Edinburgh in early June on the economic impact of technology transfer and how measure it.