A few weeks ago I was sitting in a meeting where one of the leading economists working on KTT related issues (Jerry Thursby) looked at me and wondered until which extend KTT office could be “outsourced” by Faculties. The economists (and I understand them to some extent) do not like to have TTOs act as quasi-monopolies within the Universities.
My answer at that time was that since most TTOs are not only faculty service but also University service, it is not possible for a faculty to just buy-in “TTO services” from an outside source which is not “validated” by the University. What I mean by “validated” is that the signing authority (eg VP of Research) does need to trust the negotiation job done enough to make the call to sign or not the contract.
A better question may then be , if not all, what type of activities deployed by TTOs could be outsourced ? I came up with the following list:
Core activities that need to remain within a TTO :
- Contract negotiation (licensing , collaborations)
- Faculty and Industry contacts
Activities that may be outsourced:
- Market research
- IP portfolio management (to some extent)
- Spin-out creation (eg through an incubator)
What is the best solution ? The determining factor should be service over cost and will vary from place to place. Competition is good when the outsourced services are in a profitable space. If not, one needs to be careful and avoid spending public money to duplicate monopolies.