A Design Options Paper was elaborated to present a selection of best practices considered leading in the field of Technology Transfer, and novel for most of the European regions. The process began with the analysis of the current situation of the support to SMEs in technology transfer within different organizations, external agencies and private sector, including three steps:
•An internal diagnostic of the actual conditions of the agencies and the regions where the partners are established, analysing topics such as the creation of spin-offs, businesses based on TT innovation, number of patents, TT Offices, Technology Brokers, calls launched and other relevant factors, concluding in a SWOT analysis.
•Analysis of the external conditions, such as measures adopted by agencies and organizations outside the consortium, study of companies specialized in TT and the services they provide as well as interviews to prominent Technology Brokers.
•The identification of common objectives, with the participating partners working together in the identification of ideas and key singularities.
As part of the analysis on external conditions, a study of Best Practices was carried out to identify major trends and interesting initiatives which could be used as basis for the development of new measures. After that, prominent technology brokers from several countries gave their feedback and opinion on the TT trends and the Good Practices adopted by TETRAGON partners.
After the analysis of all the aforementioned information, a second phase began, with the compilation, design and implementation of better practices, but first a specialized TT consultancy firm identified 7 model practices for the partners to work on as basis. And finally, based on the new innovation support to SMEs in TT measures compiled and analysed up to that moment, project partners proposed several good practices for the adoption in their own regions.
The Design Options Paper elaborated culminated all the research carried out by TETRAGON during its implementation, with the goal of helping place TT in the core of innovation, improving the TT measures, help the SMEs to grow, and, consequently, foster growth of the European economy.
