The document describes Innovation Meetings, a series of regional events organized by INRIA to increase awareness of technology transfer among researchers. The meetings involve technology transfer success stories presented by researchers, workshops in small groups moderated by technology transfer officers, and networking opportunities. They have been well received so far, though continued evaluation of format and topics is needed to maintain audience interest. The goal is to have one meeting per year in each of INRIA's eight regional centers.

1. Innovation Meetings
FITT
– Fostering Interregional Exchange in ICT Technology Transfer –
www.FITT-for-Innovation.eu
Except where otherwise noted, this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

2. Transfer awareness actions
 Measures to increase transfer awareness among researchers
 Designed and implemented recently by common efforts of technology
transfer and communication officers
 Two elements:
 Technology transfer guide for research teams – published in the format
of answers to the fundamental questions that a researcher can ask about
transfer
 Innovation Meetings – series of regional events targeting R&D staff,
based on presentation of “success stories” and interactive sessions
moderated by the TT officers
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3. Innovation Meetings
 Cycle of events about technology transfer, targeting researchers and
engineers
 Organised in each of 8 INRIA regional centres, related to projects,
inventions, start-ups etc. done by the local teams
 Composed of two parts:
 technology transfer “success stories”
 workshops & meetings with TT officers
 Opportunity for networking among all kinds of participants:
 researchers (speakers and public), industry representatives and
entrepreneurs (invited), TT officers and TT associates (moderators)
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4. Innovation Meetings
 Technology transfer “success stories” (morning):
 Presented by the researchers who were involved
 4-5 presentations, each of them covers specific type of transfer operation
 Examples:
 Collaboration between a research team and a SME
 Lifecycle of complex software – development, open source protection,
exploitation through start-up created by researchers
 Collaboration with a large industrial group
 Creation of a company by a team of researchers
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5. Innovation Meetings
 Workshops (morning) and meetings (afternoon):
 After the presentations researchers are divided into small groups (10 people max)
 The groups go around 4 to 5 stands prepared by TT officers and TT associates (labs-
industry interface with sectoral expertise) on different aspects of technology transfer:
 Software, patents, research collaboration with companies, TT support services, ...
 At each stand there is a short presentation (15 min) and discussion with the group:
 The objective is to present the job of TT office and opportunities
for researchers with transfer projects
 The last part of the day: after networking lunch - face-to-face meetings between
researchers and TT officers from INRIA headquarters to talk about specific problems
(appointments are available before the event)
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6. When?
 Innovation Meetings:
 The first edition: Saclay – Ile-de-France at the end of September 2010,
the second one: Grenoble at the end of January 2011
 The audience was around 50 people each time
 The current idea is that each regional centre organises one event per
year (8 events per year in total)
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7. Who?
 Stakeholders
 INRIA headquarters:
- Transfer and Innovation Department
- Communication Department
 TT and Communication officers in INRIA regional centres
 Researchers, in particular young or newcomers
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8. Where?
 Innovation Meetings
 Organised at each regional centre once a year, with collaboration and
coordination of the headquarters
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9. Pros & Cons
PROs CONs
 TT success stories communicated to  Some efforts must be done to
researchers by researchers sound make the event attractive:
more credible
 Good promotion
 The interactive and light form of
workshops facilitates discussions  Providing high quality content
and interesting speakers
 Time dedicated to discuss with
researchers about their ideas,
projects is also a possibility of
preliminary detection
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10. Why ?
 Rationale:
 Re-thinking the general measures for internal communication and
awareness creation
 The idea was to have a comprehensive measure/programme including
a tool (paper guide) and a cycle of events (Innovation Meetings)
 It was essential to reach young researchers and newcomers, usually
more open to transfer issues and curious about how the institute works
 No “preaching”, but encouraging and supporting the interested ones
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11. Why ?
 Impact:
 INRIA’s experience in approaching researchers shows that:
- Young researchers are more flexible and easily accept some new
ways of thinking and doing, while experienced researchers rarely
change their old habits
- It is important to choose well the target group; different profiles of
researchers exist and addressing all of them by the same measure
is less efficient
- There is a need of more focused actions instead of generalised
ones, even if they are going to reach fewer people
 It is important to avoid the feeling that the actions are top-down (that is
why researchers are the main speakers during Innovation Meetings)
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12. Outcome
 The regional events are quite recent and a more complete feedback will only
be possibly at least after one year
 They have been well received by all stakeholders so far
 The two editions of Innovation Mornings can be judged successful, with
satisfying number of attendees and high quality of presentations
 The teams of TT officers and communication officers are motivated and
engaged to work on the organisation of the next ones
 There is a visible interest among researchers who participate
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13. Outcome
 Plans for the future:
 The Innovation Meetings: each regional centre is going to organise one
event during the first year
 After that there will be a question whether:
- to keep this frequency – if able to provide fresh and interesting
topics at each time
- to make longer breaks between the events – if risk of repetition
and lack of audience
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14. Lessons Learned
 It is important to make the format relatively short in order to get enough
audience
 The agenda should keep the balance between presentations and interactive
part (workshops)
 It is important to schedule enough time for questions and answers after each
presentation, as INRIA’s experience has showed that people asked many
questions; for the next events we will shorten the presentations to privilege
interaction with the audience
 We suggest that the director of the PRO opens the session, which reinforce
the image of technology transfer as an important activity for the whole
organisation
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15. Suggested Readings
 Link to bibliography
 Link to code book
Awareness, communication, people, researcher, idea, technology transfer
 Link to relevant websites
INRIA’s Transfer and Innovation Department website:
http://en.inria.fr/innovation/partnerships-transfer-of-technology
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