Innovative Flanders Innovation Policies for the 21st Century: Report of a Symposium (2008) / Chapter Skim
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Session IV: Innovation Through Knowledge Diffusion
Session IV: Innovation Through Knowledge Diffusion
Pages 80-89
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From page 80... ...
Leuven as a Hotspot for Regional Innovation Koenraad Debackere K.U.Leuven Professor Debackere began by noting the rapid increase in scientific collaboration, especially between industry and academia, and he proposed to review research data developed with colleagues about the effects of these links at K.U.Leuven. Generating Innovation Opportunities He said that when universities such as Leuven are regarded as knowledge institutes, they can generate innovation opportunities in many ways.
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From page 81... ...
Growing Economic Role for the University The economic role of the university is growing more significant for the region, he said. Its mission statement includes the following goal: "To promote and support knowledge and technology transfer to industry." This mission is carried out at three levels.
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From page 82... ...
In the Netherlands, he said, universities have a holding company as a PROC Figure 07 separate legal entity to commercialize R&D. This signals a strong strategic intent to exploit research through innovation, but is still somewhat decoupled from what happens within the university.
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From page 83... ...
He summarized the reasons for Leuven's success at commercializing R&D as follows: • A critical mass of high-quality, internationally competitive research. "This is why IMEC and K.U.Leuven are very strict in their performance assessments." • An integrated approach to technology transfer, such as incentives for multidisciplinary teams and high value-added services;
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From page 84... ...
Recalculating the chemical activity per capita brings Belgium into second place in the world. The first place, he said, is for Ireland, which had passed Belgium only 2 or 3 years earlier, "largely due to some differences in economic constitution and possibilities created by the Irish government." He said that Belgium was especially strong in the pharmaceutical sector, with about 40 percent of all pharmaceutical products found in one of the laboratories there.
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From page 85... ...
This, he warned, was based on widespread misperceptions that "could be a major obstacle for the continuous evolution of Europe." He cited studies concluding that European competitiveness was at risk unless more social acceptance is obtained that innovation is "a key driver for future competitiveness." Chemical innovation, in particular, he said, has an "enormous impact downstream," and he asserted that "the only way to grow further in all industrial sectors is by paying even more attention to chemical innovation." He said that the three pillars of SusChem are industrial biotechnology, materials technology, and reaction and process design. For the first pillar of industrial biotech, the main goals are to create "bio-renewables" to reduce carbon dioxide emissions and conserve fossil fuels.
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From page 86... ...
It contributes all the way from individual reactions to the viability of production plants, and drives sustainable development of the EU chemical and biotech industries. • New nanotechnology approaches: These include materials with new optical properties, hardness and toughness, and electromagnetic properties; new chemical processes like chemical reactivity and catalytic yield; and new bioapplications through self-organization, reparability, adaptability, and recognition.
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From page 87... ...
But when the lab widens this spectrum to include technology transfer, PhD trainees, too, are exposed to the broad nature of engineering science and its natural collaborations with industry. Academia cannot do the whole job in health science, for example, because valid analyses of interaction between materials and living tissues require larger sample populations than are found in university labs.
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From page 88... ...
: "In research, Europe has too long adhered to a defunct model of research utility. It must recognize that the transition to a globally competitive, innovation-driven economy necessarily depends upon the stimulation of fundamental research and its link to the innovation process." Obstacles to Technology Transfer Technology transfer is seldom simple, he said, especially for universities without long experience in the process.
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From page 89... ...
This implies that knowledge creation will benefit from the quality of education delivered to students at all levels, be it undergraduate, graduate, or postgraduate. Second, a technology transfer relationship between centers of higher learning and their corporate offspring must not be open-ended but confined in time.
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