The workshop taking place last week 23-24 of November 2010 was a most interesting event.
The conference opened (following the usual political speeches) with a discussion regarding the transfer from the lab to the industry of research results. The panel composition was most interesting. While the Israeli part was represented by Technology Transfer Companies managers and CEOs (Bar-Ilan R&D, BGN Technologies, Ramot at Tel Aviv University, Yeda etc.), the Italian part was represented by managers and Presidents of National Research Institutes (CNR, ISS, ISA ENEA etc.).
There were other very significant differences between the two country models. It seemed that the Israeli companies represented smaller organizations in comparison to the Italian organizations represented in the panels, the numbers of invention disclosed; patent applied for and approved, were larger for the Israeli firms. It would also seem that in most cases the Israeli Technology Transfer firms have been active for a longer period than the Italian counter parts.
Another interesting difference was regarding the performance data of the organizations. The Israeli Technology Transfer Companies, are private organizations, and their financial and therefore performance reports are confidential. The workshop served as an opportunity to discover some of the performance data. The Italian National Institutes are public organizations and their information is therefore public.
The Italian organization cited proudly the number of spin-offs they accumulated over the years, and lamented the scarcity of venture capital, which was, according to them, a barrier to further increasing the number of spin-offs. The Israeli technology Transfer companies while citing similar data mentioned (Yeda) preference to licensing over spin-offs.
That point was not discussed (I had asked the question, but Dr. Naiberg from Yeda was not given the chance to answer), but what is the difference between the two venues?
The biggest difference is in the overall employment impact. A spin-off creates measurable new employment positions. Licensing to a large organization, while it may add employment opportunities is harder to measure as a result of the TT effort. Thus governments and government organizations prefer this option. For commercial organizations, licensing has less risk embedded and can generate a cash flow more rapidly than spin-offs.
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