National body to help universities create spin-outs

IRISH universities will be supported in their efforts to produce spin-out high potential companies by a new national professional body.

The new Irish Technology Transfer and Innovation Group (ITTIG) plans to increase both the number of spin-out firms created in Irish higher education institutions (HEIs), and the number of technology licence agreements between the HEIs and industry partners.

ITTIG chairman, Dr John Scanlan, explained: “It’s widely acknowledged that, while foreign direct investment continues to be hugely important for the Irish economy, we need to ramp up our own indigenous industries, especially in high tech, high potential, export-oriented sectors, like life sciences, medical devices, and clean technologies.

“The recent reports from the Government’s Innovation Taskforce and from the Forfás-commissioned AD Little study both point to the need to maintain a parallel strategy of anchoring foreign investment in Ireland by engaging in research and new product development, while also growing new, high potential technology companies.”

Figures from the TTOs collated by Enterprise Ireland show that 35 spin-out companies were created in 2009 across the main HEIs, up from an average of 10 per annum in the years prior to the formal introduction of Enterprise Ireland support for the offices.

The ITTIG is made up of the directors of the technology transfer offices of Ireland’s HEIs. These include the seven national universities (DCU, NUIG, NUIM, TCD, UCC, UCD and UL) along with DIT, WIT and the RCSI. Similar professional bodies have been established in the US and in several other European countries, where technology transfer offices (TTOs) are at an advanced stage of development.

Also, significantly, research carried out by international technology transfer bodies shows that Ireland compares well to the rest of Europe and the US, in terms of the cost of creating a viable spin-out company. For example, for every €100m in research spending in the HEIs, Ireland produces five spin-out companies compared to an average of 3.3 across the EU and just two in the US.