Last week there was a conference about tech transfer in Beijing. AUTM was co-host of this meeting and Ashley Stevens and I were pleased to be among the 368 foreign attendees and more than 1500 Chinese companies that were in attendance. But in all honesty, this was not your typical tech transfer meeting.
One of the greatest challenges that TT organizations around the globe face when organizing meetings is how to get industry engaged. This second Beijing TT meeting can more appropriately be labelled as a partnering event. By actively engaging with businesses domestic and abroad well in advance of the meeting the conference organizers, the International Technology Transfer Network, were able to create a dynamic and active forum for those interested in creating new partnerships. When these potential partners were then in the room, and it was a very big room, they then facilitated the partnering discussions. I think they are on the right path towards creating a valuable Chinese partnering venue.
Some Universities participated directly, Purdue was well represented from their business development side and Scott Inwood from the University of Waterloo was there to pitch a technology to potential partners. I think there is much to be gleaned from these two schools experiences at this meeting and in particular how we, as AUTM, can inform our membership about how to take advantage of conferences such as this. As tech transfer offices evolve and diversify their service offerings there will be an important role for AUTM to play in collecting these experiences and consolidating them into a useful knowledge base for members to draw upon in the future. We have seen this historically in materials such as the Tech Transfer Practice manual and our professional development courses and in the future there will be an even greater role for AUTM, both in the USA and abroad.