Tory proposal for a nationwide TT office

Wow, a Tory policy. And, one that would affect us.

link

'The country should have an Innovative Projects Agency with a budget of £1bn a year "to pull through research ideas into viable products and services", the Conservative party says today.... At its heart would be the new IPA, a non-departmental public body with its own staff, directors and advisory board. Its funding would come from redirecting some of the government's existing expenditure on technology and innovation - mainly with the Department of Trade and Industry.'

Here's a thought - give the c.£1bn to existing TT offices for seed funding and proof-of-concept, instead of setting up a duplicate service! Reckon they'd listen to us?

The Antikythera mechanism

Here and here.

'The ancient Antikythera Mechanism doesn't just challenge our assumptions about technology transfer over the ages — it gives us fresh insights into history itself.... But I'm also interested in finding the answer to a more perplexing question — once the technology arose, where did it go to? '

Microsoft's own tech transfer people

link

'....Part of the Microsoft Research organisation is a technology transfer team. We have one that works globally and is run from the Redmond lab. We jokingly call them the spy network. They go round the rest of the company, and their role is to understand what the product divisions are doing and what their technical challenges are.... So the team knows what's going on in research and they know the product groups so they try and build relationships. Then technology transfer takes place in all sorts of ways. It works quite well. The other thing we do now is think about licensing technologies to Microsoft partners. The most recent example of that is a program called IP Ventures, where we contribute intellectual property and work with venture capitalists to create a company and take an idea to market.'