A Structured Approach to Academic Technology Transfer: Lessons Learned from imec’s 101 Programme

Abstract

In this article, we describe imec's 101 Programme for academic technology transfer and explain how it supports researchers by following a structured process in a limited amount of time and by carefully involving different stakeholders and people with relevant skills and expertise. The programme combines insights in terms of processes and of team composition from the entrepreneurship literature and puts them into practice in an internal incubation programme that is generated from the bottom-up. Based on hands-on experiences and interviews with key stakeholders in the process, we evaluate the programme and distill lessons learned. The article highlights the importance of a structured technology transfer process in the early stages of opportunity discovery and entrepreneurial action, and it offers insights on team formation for academic spin-offs.