VCs-Deans Summit: spotlight on "tech transfer"

Last week I had the pleasure of spending just over 24 hours in Washington, DC — one of my favourite cities and the place I called home for almost five years. I was in town to speak at the inaugural VCs-Deans Summit held at the Canadian Embassy and co-hosted by the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health and the National Council of Entrepreneurial Tech Transfer.

The full-day session was designed to break down the ivory tower walls impeding the creation of venture-backed start-ups from university research. The agenda was anchored by two large panels of VCs and tech transfer execs sharing their collaborative experiences and key success factors. Despite their size (each was composed of a dozen speakers) an able moderator kept the discussion and the day on-track.

What I found most interesting, however, were the profiles of two institutions completely transforming their tech transfer offices. First, the University of Southern California.

• Until now, USC hasn’t been seen as a traditional innovation powerhouse — despite its strength in communications, film and new media. Listen to Krisztina Holly (the school’s new Vice Provost) and that sense will change. An eloquent and youthful speaker, Holly came to USC from the Deshpande Centre at MIT, which was created in 2002 to accelerate the commercialization of the school’s innovative research. Since then, the Centre has funded 64 projects with over US$7M in grants. In turn, 11 of these projects have been spun out, collectively raising over $88M in outside financing from a dozen VC firms.
• Now, Holly is the brains behind the new Stevens Institute for Innovation at USC, a new interdisciplinary centre established through a $22M gift from Mark Stevens (of Sequoia venture capital fame). The Institute will be built around cross-disciplinary teams, a university-wide focus (hence the location in the Provost’s office) and a focus on innovators as well as innovation. (I was especially struck by Holly’s definition of innovation as “the process of translating new ideas into tangible social impact” — something that resonated with me in the context of MaRS’ new social innovation project.)

The second school that left an impact was the University of Texas A&M:

• Why A&M? Simple. It’s the first public university in the United States to include commercialization as a factor in granting tenure. According to Guy Dietrich (the alum turned VC, turned tech transfer guru), the university just granted tenure to a prof who had published not a single article for 18 months, a decision that sent shockwaves through a system looking for signs the administration would put its money where its mouth was.
• A&M also combined three offices into a single, uber tech transfer department: Federal Relations, Research, and Commercialization. Not bad a for school with 105,000 students, 25,000 employees and $650 million of annual research spending.

As a legion of Ontario — and Canadian — universities look to revolutionize tech transfer on this side of the border, they could do worse than pay close attention to both USC and A&M.