Technology, Market and Company Journeys: How Can We Help Them Succeed? - Technopolis: Best Practices for Science and Technology Cities - page 204

4.2.4 Technology Transfer Offices

Today there is increasing emphasis on funding R&D that has a strong orientation
towards potential commercial value. This direction when associated with the
cultural change engendered by the presence of a science and technology park on a
campus helps to increase interest in the commercialisation of new ideas.
Although there are still relatively few companies being spun out of universities
the professionalisation of the work of Technology Transfer Offices in the higher
education sector through training and provision of funding to support technology
commercialisation means it is likely that this will eventually lead to the formation
of companies occurring on a larger scale.
The role of science parks in this technology journey is aimed more towards
supporting the downstream commercialisation phases rather than in the discovery
process. This means that parks have to be more active in mobilising the resources
to drive the market and company journeys rather than technology journeys,
although this cannot be ignored.

4.3 Market Journey

A full market journey for technology takes the market from complete indifference
to widespread adoption. Of course not all technologies start at the beginning of this
continuum and not all end in wide spread adoption. Experience has shown that
some are taken out of the market by acquisition before they are become fully
fledged technologies Fig. 7 .
The critical ingredient in this journey are the skills and flair of the entrepreneur.
This comes from a combination of an understanding of the market place, rec-
ognising how this market would benefit from the technology and then organising
the development of the market.
However, there are support programmes which can help with working along the
process. These include:

• Providing funds to create demonstrators for field trials of ideas.
• Using networks to link companies still in incubation with larger companies
looking to develop by using open innovation strategies.
• Using science park networks to connect companies across wider sector groups.

Fig. 7 Characterisation of the market journey in business development