Recently I compared Cambridge University Enterprise with Danish Tech Transfer Offices. Now the 2005 statistics from the Danish side have been published- The report, which is not yet publicly available (?), shows that the Danish TTOs have improved 15-20% on average on major indicators. Well done!! Especially one of the small "regional" universities with a tradition for industrial collaboration has imporved a lot. For those who read Danish, it becomes obvious that the PROs invested more especially by increasing staff and other costs (of course, more patents-more expense).
No doubt, the increase in disclosures and patents, spinoffs etc is a good investment which will pay back a few years from now.
But there is a matter of concern: there must be (I don't yet have specifics) quite a number of patents, licenses and spinoff creations, which were obtained by using funds from another "box" of the same ministry which monitors the PROs. So there is a problem of semantics (and maybe also reality) whether such partners can be considered "industry" partners? I have no doubts that the money spent by the Ministry is one of the best investments the Danish government may ever have made...BUT someone may have to create a smoke screen to persuade opposition politicians nothing is wrong??
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