JRC and Area Science Park talk tech transfer in Trieste

The European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC) and IASP member Area Science Park held a hybrid conference on Technology Transfer, from 17th-19th November 2021 in Trieste (Italy), with speakers and participants also joining online from across Europe.

Under the main theme of ‘Strengthening Technology Transfer in Europe’, the event featured a policy dialogue on research, development and innovation and 12 technical sessions on specific aspects of technology transfer, before moving on to explore innovation ecosystems and entrepreneurship, including innovation ecosystem design, research infrastructure and testbeds, early-stage financing, investor readiness, and more.

As part of this track, IASP CEO Ebba Lund travelled to Trieste to join members Gordana Danilovic Grkovic (Science Technology Park Belgrade, Serbia) and Stephen Taylor, (Area Science Park, Italy) on a technical panel on day 2, exploring the topic of ‘How to build innovation ecosystems’. Experts Filippo Addarii (PlusValue) and Paris Kokorotsikos (Euroconsultants) also joined the panel, offering insights on their work setting up Milano Innovation District – MIND (Italy) and ThessINTEC - Thessaloniki Innovation & Technology Center (Greece), both also members of IASP.

Moderated by Alessandro Fazio (JRC), the panel presented some of the key strategies that regions can put in place to build a successful innovation ecosystem, and shared their own local experiences and case studies of their STPs/AOIs.

Reflecting on the origins and different operating models of their innovation ecosystems, panellists contrasted publicly run STPs/AOIs with private or PPP governance models, and the different approaches to establish a quality ecosystem from scratch – it can be done fast with significant investment in bringing in international experts, or more slowly and at lower cost by training young, talented people who learn by doing. Partnerships at all levels are vital, to attract the right talent, investment and infrastructure support, but all agreed that human resources are fundamental to the success of any project. “You can’t have an innovation ecosystem without having talented people doing the work,” said Stephen Taylor.

You can find out more about the event organisers JRC at https://ec.europa.eu/jrc/en and about Area Science Park at http://en.areasciencepark.it/.