Spin-out numbers rising...

.... and they're not all going bust:

'Increasing collaboration between business and universities has fuelled a surge in spin-out companies and the licensing of scientific research to industry, reveal figures published by the government today.'

Link here.

Outsourcing works

'Universities that use external, publicly quoted companies to help create spin-outs are more successful than those that do the work in-house, research has shown....'

here

Hedge fund gets stuck in at Oxford, UK TT closing on the US

Sloane Robinson, one of London's largest and best-known hedge funds, has formed a private equity firm to commercialise promising Oxford University engineering ideas.... The venture is Sloane Robinson's first foray into private equity, and will see a subsidiary, Technikos, take a 50pc stake in any spin-out companies and half of the University's share of royalties from any technologies produced.
here

British universities are as efficient at commercialising new academic ideas as their US counterparts, a new study by Library House has found....Venture capitalists poured more money into new ideas generated by Imperial College London, Oxford, Southampton and University College London than into Washington, while Bristol, Edinburgh, Newcastle and Manchester all fared better than Wisconsin.
here

Technology transfer in North Korea

link

Not much I can say here! The website is better than some university sites, though...

Merry Christmas, everyone.

James Watt & TT

Link

The step change for steam was first glimpsed neither in a factory nor in a garden shed but in the one of the greatest university labs of its day. It was devised by an innovator pioneering the use of mathematics in instrument making. But its delivery was also a commercial accomplishment requiring persistence, capital, and determination.

It was Matthew Boulton, not the University of Glasgow, who had the financial muscle to see development through to full commercial success. This unfortunately has been a recurring theme of UK academic invention over the centuries. But it is beginning now to change....

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.'