I was contacted recently by a government official of a country where they are trying to set up several TT offices which would serve large regions as hubs. I said to him I was not very keen in regional servicing TTOs and that a Swiss effort to do this failed (the Swiss network of Innovation).
Bureaucrats love this idea of funding only a handful of TT entities. It makes their life easier to get the due reporting and manage the network. It also looks good for politicians weary of spending public money in too many organizations. Companies love it too because they think having fewer seller’s of technology would provide a more efficient market.
I have to concede , I actually agree with them.
However , despite these positive aspects, one need to keep in mind that such centralization comes at the expense of an important element which is central to academic innovation: the interest and implication of the initiators of the discoveries.
By putting more emphasize on the technology over its contributors , hubs or centralized TT office will have a much more challenging time in keeping academics interested and pro-active to disclose and help develop new discoveries. If you are not MIT or Stanford, keeping academics involved actually lies often on top of the priorities.
So where does mutualization add value to the technology transfer ? Sub critical schools or Universities should turn to existing and well established technology transfer offices for help. The government could support for a few years the cost one technology transfer officer that is shared between both organizations. After that, either there is enough deal flow to have a dedicated unit (about 30 disclosures a year) or the partnership will maintain itself without governement support.
Another role for the government would be to support positions of marketing specialists that are hired within industrial clusters or trade associations and which job would be to provide support to TT officers in identifying the best contacts within such networks of companies.
Nothing politically or bureaucratically sexy but of true added value for the practitioners.