The TenU Future Leaders Programme: the interim report
The international TenU Future Leaders Programme launched on 16th September 2021, with weekly sessions throughout four months. The Programme offers 12 mid-level tech transfer professionals a unique opportunity to:
· gain insight into the organisational practices and strategies of fellow participant offices,
· experience each other’s leadership, and
· build strong networks to draw on throughout their professional lives.
Designed with greater flexibility and inclusivity as founding principles, the Programme involves participants based in the US, UK and Belgium.
Screenshot of the introductory ‘Meet the Directors’ session
This interim report outlines some of the lessons from the first half of the programme. For this, we draw on the weekly survey completed by each of the 12 participants after each session. We find that leadership, DEI and collaboration are key tenets of the programme that have already become key discussion points and objectives for the participants.
The context
The TenU Future Leaders Programme was conceived as the first project within the Memorandum of Understanding for US-UK Research Cooperation signed by the US National Institute for Standards and Technology, NIST, and UK Research and Innovation, UKRI, in November 2020.
The pilot is expected to benefit the international technology transfer community as a whole: on completion of the first round, TenU, with contributions from the participants, will launch a report presenting emerging trends in technology transfer and recommendations for future rounds of the Programme. Future rounds are hoped to extend well beyond TenU and across the international tech transfer community - more on this soon.
The first pilot round of the Programme has been generously funded by UKRI Research England.
The remote cohort-based model
The Programme’s remote cohort-based model is structured around a cohort composed of individual representatives of each of the participating offices, who together attend a rotating programme of activities organised by each of the offices. This allows all participants to visit each other’s offices and offers the opportunity to gain insight into the structure, practices and challenges of all of the participating offices. Each session is designed by the participants with help from their offices and support from the TenU team. Activities have included presentations on internal approaches to specific challenges, case workshops and brainstorming sessions, in addition to other activities tailored to support knowledge-sharing and bonding between participants.
The remote cohort-based model has been designed with greater flexibility and inclusivity as founding principles. It encourages participation of potential candidates who would have struggled to leave the office for prolonged periods of time, either because of family or professional commitments. The remote feature allows also for a low-cost Programme that has the added benefit of being more environmentally friendly.
In this first, pilot, round, the Programme is fully remote. However, it is envisaged that in subsequent rounds, once restrictions due to the pandemic are lifted, the main remote cohort-based model will include a one-week residential programme of activities. During this week, participants will meet at one location chosen by the participant offices, either near one office or a cluster of nearby offices. This additional dimension will help to strengthen the bond between participants.
The participants
The participating offices are those of TenU that had the time and resources to contribute to the programme, plus selected partner offices, for a total of 11 offices of the universities of Cambridge, Carnegie Mellon, Columbia, Cornell, Edinburgh, Illinois, Imperial, Johns Hopkins, KU Leuven, Oxford, and Stanford. In order to select the participants, each participating office put forward two to three candidates from which the cohort was chosen. Candidates were chosen from roles related to tech transfer activities, including those in patenting, licensing, company formation, seed funds and marketing. The participants were then selected to form a balanced cohort in terms of gender, ethnicity and nationality. Finally, we invited a fellow through an open call to join the 12-participant cohort. Women are currently over-represented (eight to four) and people from ethnic minorities in the US and Europe (i.e. Latin-American, African-European, East-Asian, and Asian-American) constitute about half of the cohort.
Case studies
The following is a selection of exciting programmes presented in the first half of the TenU Future Leaders Programme.
The Internship Programme
The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) Office of Technology Management (OTM) Commercialization Analyst Internship Programme was pioneered in the earliest days of OTM as an effort to engage graduate-level students in technology assessment and management. Twenty years and hundreds of interns later, the program remains heavily integrated into OTM’s core processes and has evolved into a launchpad for commercialisation professionals from diverse technical and personal backgrounds. Since 2011, nearly 30% of Commercialization Analysts have pursued careers in technology transfer, and nearly 60% have remained within the broader field of innovation and/or intellectual property. This remarkable retention within the expansive disciplines of “commercialisation” underscores the critical role technology transfer internships can have in benefiting not only participants and the host institution, but also the global tech transfer and commercialisation community.
The Accelerator
The Centre for Drug Design and Discovery, CD3, was established in 2006 by KU Leuven Research & Development (LRD) and the European Investment Fund (EIF). From the start CD3 was set up as an investment fund and independent translational platform within LRD.
CD3 focuses on the discovery, development and transfer of new innovative small molecule drugs. CD3 translates fundamental research into new drugs by developing them to a stage that is of interest to pharmaceutical and biotech companies. The cornerstone of CD3’s activities are hand-in-hand collaborations with academic research groups from KU Leuven, as well as external research institutes, biotech or pharma partners. They complement investments with an experienced drug discovery team and state-of-the-art infrastructure. Hence, projects lead to co-development partnerships, licenses or spin-outs. Partnering with CD3 brings in depth expertise as well as financial and operational support via a risk-sharing model and allows to effectively bridge the gap between discovery research and the market.
CD3 is the spider in the web for expanding our international ecosystem. Under the leadership of Patrick Chaltin, Managing Director, CD3 has raised over €90m. Several of its programs were successfully partnered with pharma or incorporated in spin-outs for various disorders such as HIV, cancer, arthritis, asthma, Dengue virus infections and Alzheimer’s disease.
The student entrepreneurship programme
In 2018, Johns Hopkins University launched FastForward U, a programme to nurture student entrepreneurs with the same type of education, space, mentorship and other resources that had become available to faculty following a 2014 $70M university investment in innovation infrastructure. FastForward U sits within Johns Hopkins Technology Ventures, the commercialization and entrepreneurship hub of the university, and serves students from all nine Johns Hopkins schools. FastForward U seeks to shape student projects into investible high-impact ventures – student ventures have raised significant money across the past few years, including $29M last year – but also serves to provide an environment for experiential learning for any student interested in venture skills. A 10,000 square foot facility grounds the program; it’s a place where students can meet, participate in accelerator programs, seek professional consultation, and utilize a makerspace. Touching well over a hundred student-led ventures a year, the program engages thousands of people and is on track to give away over $365k in non-dilutive, alumni-driven philanthropic grants this year. FastForward U is an integral part of JHTV’s work to build the Baltimore innovation ecosystem by helping student ventures build and enrich connections with the community to encourage the next generation of innovators to stay in the city after graduation.
The survey
The survey was designed with three challenges in mind. First, it is important to note that, unlike in traditional programmes, this programme’s participants are not only students, but also co-creators of content. A qualitative survey, based on open questions, therefore helped to gather as much constructive feedback as possible. Second, ease and speed of completion was important and so the survey is relatively short. Third, to enable an opportunity for reflection and internalisation of lessons learned, the survey focussed on three core questions and a fourth optional question, as follows:
· Please share the most thought-provoking, provocative or insightful lesson of today on technology transfer.
· Now think about the most thought-provoking, provocative or insightful lesson of today on your current leadership challenges.
· Name one thing that you would do differently in your role as a result of today's insight.
· Do you have any additional thoughts on today's session that you would like to record?
The response rate to date has been 83 per cent, with respondents completing all three core questions each time, indicating some success in addressing the second challenge. Crucially, regarding the third challenge, the responses reflect depth of thought and engagement, and so provide rich insight about the Programme and the respondents’ priorities.
To analyse the results, we used a qualitative approach based on thematic analysis. The word cloud below shows the relative prevalence of key words from the responses, and subsequent analysis revealed the key themes outlined below.
Key themes
The key themes can be divided into three groups: organisational themes, action themes, and topical themes.
Organisational themes
· Leadership
As the word cloud shows, one of the most important discussion points was that of leadership. This is unsurprising, as the first session, an introduction to Daniel Goleman’s leadership styles, led by leadership consultant Jenny Reindorp, set the tone for subsequent sessions. The comments on this session reflected an enthusiasm for a new-found tool and a desire to ‘consciously reflect on’, ‘be more intentional about’ and ‘learn how to flex’ their own leadership styles and when to use them.
As the programme moved on, people continued talking about leadership and leaders, projecting a series of characteristics on them. For instance, leaders were expected or seen within the programme to ‘believe in goals and be passionate’; ‘change prevailing wisdom and challenge status quo’, and ‘be supportive and accept failure to drive entrepreneurial culture’.
Regarding diversity, equality and inclusion (DEI, also a prominent topic, to which I will return below), leaders were expected to ‘play their part by example’, whilst ‘not reinforcing stereotypes’. Meanwhile, ‘DEI awareness and policy’ were expected to be ‘an integral part of leadership’.
When reflecting about their own role, leaders were also seen to ‘deal with difficult problems’ and therefore need to ‘have confidence in their own decisions’. They also needed ‘to invest in developing those that report to them’ so that they could eventually ‘delegate’.
In short, leadership has been a theme traversing the programme beyond the leadership styles discussed in the first session. In addition to reflecting on their own leadership styles, respondents have projected a series of expectations on leaders, but have also acknowledged the challenges confronted by leaders. Meanwhile, DEI awareness and leadership was thought to be an essential characteristic of contemporary leadership.
· Change
Making ‘meaningful changes’ was a take-home message from the ‘Meet the Directors’ session that formed part of the introduction. More specifically, again related to DEI, ‘rather than specific programs to encourage women and diverse groups, the workplace and environment needed to be changed to be more favourable for all groups to thrive’.
How to achieve change took precedence over what change to pursue. It was acknowledged that ‘change takes time and effort’ but above all that ‘change is a collaborative effort’ and that ‘it takes a village to do something inspiring’. Leadership was also perceived as key to driving change, as illustrated above and in the following statement: ‘getting the support from the leadership on any DEI initiative is critical’.
In short, change was perceived as a collective effort that would benefit from strong leadership.
· Decision-making
Decision-making was related above all to taking invention disclosures forward to the next stage. For instance, participants were impressed by Cambridge Enterprise’s speed in getting decisions to inventors and noted the need for transparency and for establishing the ‘minimal necessary facts’. The complexity of these decisions was also highlighted, involving ‘risk assessment and the politics of the university’.
Regarding DEI, one respondent noted in relation to hiring decisions, ‘to be aware of potential biases by gender and ethnicity and to try to eliminate or limit these’.
Decision-making was perceived as an integral part of confident leadership that permeates all areas of tech transfer, including DEI.
· Network/collaboration/relations/stakeholders/community
We grouped statements involving the words above to find a series of inter-related reflections on the importance of investing in internal and external stakeholders and nurturing relations. This was perceived to be important to secure a ‘thriving tech transfer environment’; to ‘understand hidden problems’; to ‘benefit university and research community’, and, more generally, ‘to make changes together’.
Proposals on how to do this involved creating a ‘portal to enable multiple stakeholders to engage’; ‘maintaining existing relations’ and ‘building new valuable relations’; ‘creating transparency for all stakeholders involved’ in order to ‘align and manage expectations’; ‘thinking strategically’ and ‘joining that up’ with the home institution; ‘carve out time’, and, crucially, ‘understand’ what ‘other teams at [their] office’ and ‘the broader translation ecosystem’ were doing.
In summary, the community, whether internal or external, was perceived to be a key asset and collaboration an important tool to drive positive change and reap rewards.
Considering that the programme had been built with the objectives to build strong networks between participants and for them to experience each other’s leadership styles, the overall insight gained through the first set of surveys is encouraging. Reflections highlighting the crucial role that leaders play in motivating and supporting change and the importance of collaboration to ultimately drive the change, are therefore much welcome.
Action themes
These themes were mainly related to the third question: what would you do differently as a result of today’s insight?
We grouped words encountered under this question into three themes: seeking knowledge, taking action and lifting others.
Interestingly, and again in line with the objectives of the programme, the three themes are often made possible by leaders or by themselves in a leadership position. Similarly, many of the words recognise the importance of working with or for other people, be they stakeholders, the wider community or those less privileged than themselves.
Topical themes
We highlight three recurrent themes: the differences and similarities encountered across the participating offices; data and metrics, and diversity, equality and inclusion (DEI).
· Differences and similarities
Differences were celebrated by acknowledging that there was much to learn from participant offices. More eloquently, a respondent praised the ‘incredible diversity of structure, scope, and mission of tech transfer offices’. Regarding engaging students in entrepreneurship, a topic addressed at the fifth session, a respondent noted a ‘huge range as to how institution support and engage their entrepreneurial students’. This was so even when the session leader’s polls on the topic pointed to broadly similar approaches taken by institutions, suggesting that the nuance expressed in the discussion following the polls had left an impression.
One respondent was amazed ‘to see the resources that some institutions have’, noting that their own institutions would ‘likely never have the windfall of funds required to replicate these programs at scale’. Another respondent saw a ‘gap between the US and Europe when it comes to DEI initiatives targeting minorities’, after a discussion highlighting the opportunities for social mobility offered by European governments, for instance via free university education for all, versus targeted donations in the US to fund DEI initiatives.
Similarities were highlighted together with an expression of belonging: ‘no matter the size or shape of the tech transfer office or local ecosystem, we all face very similar challenges and barriers’. This included the realisation that there were common challenges: ‘TTOs are facing quite the same roadblocks: how to create awareness about our activities within our research community and how to efficiently reach out to faculty members’ or ‘TTOs are struggling to find a business development model that will significantly increase their outreach and engagement to companies for licensing or sponsoring’.
Regarding DEI, ‘a general agreement on common experiences’ hinted at a frustration with what was felt ‘like good intentions’: a ‘pervasive approach throughout our offices, almost to the detriment of achieving more DEI.
In short, there was a sense of wonder linked to how much there was to learn from each other, coupled with an acknowledgement that there was much in common that brought everyone together. This included both opportunities to improve the sector as a whole (e.g. in business development), and challenges faced by individual institutions (e.g. funding) and the sector as a whole (e.g. DEI).
· Data and metrics
Data and metrics were touched upon especially in relation to two sessions, the third session on DEI by Columbia Tech Ventures (CTV) and the fourth on business development and marketing by the Stanford Office for Technology Licensing.
Regarding DEI, a respondent voiced their frustration by stating that ‘good DEI intentions are well and fine but concrete KPI's/metrics are required to measure progress’. Similarly, another responded stressed that ‘data are needed to expose gaps’ that could then be bridged ‘by introducing quotas and fostering DEI initiatives’.
Regarding the choice of programme that CTV settled upon, a respondent wondered ‘what metrics do you want to measure and how do you get there?’
But not all were persuaded that data was the answer, even though they agreed with the sentiment. Their lesson of the day was ‘taking a more active role in increasing diversity in our portfolio without necessarily invoking KPIs or other metrics’.
Data might be perceived as intimidating, especially when it measures the relative performance of a team. This was expressed in relation to the business development and marketing (BDM) session, when a respondent picked out a comment made by the session leader about how they ‘built a team around the [BDM] goals without letting metrics feel threatening to them’. While that was clearly a concern, data was seen as an essential part of ‘increasing outreach and engagement with companies for licensing and sponsoring’ across the participating TTOs: ‘CRM Databases and marketing tools are critical components of this process.’
Overall, data and metrics are an essential tool of contemporary tech transfer practice, including, and perhaps especially, regarding such a topical issue as is DEI.
· Diversity, equality and inclusion
As illustrated above in the word cloud but also in the different statements, DEI has traversed all of the themes.
Considering that flexibility and inclusion are founding principles, the Programme attracts people who are especially aware of and interested in DEI issues. But the interest in DEI is not only intrinsic of this programme, but a wider reflection of a global movement that has taken hold following the explosion of the #MeToo and #BlackLivesMatter movements. This was no doubt amplified within the Programme by the third session presented by Columbia Tech Ventures on its Diversity and Inclusion in Commercialization and Entrepreneurship Program (DICE).
Crucially, the reflections demonstrate a great awareness and understanding of the issues surrounding DEI and a willingness to drive it within individual offices and the sector as a whole.
The full schedule of the TenU Future Leaders programme
In summary
In summary, the objectives outlined above have already taken hold within the cohort. The participants have had opportunities to gain insight into the organisational practices and strategies of fellow participant offices not only through each of the sessions presented by participating offices, but also through discussion and sharing of effective practices. They have had opportunities to experience each other’s leadership as well as that of key colleagues in the participating offices.
We hope that all of this will result in a strong cohort that meets and draws on each other well beyond this Programme. So far, it has been encouraging to see the deep engagement in each of the sessions, demonstrated not only through consistent, highly engaged, participation, but also through the highly reflective survey responses.
As the thematic analysis has shown, themes surrounding leadership, collaboration and DEI have taken precedence above all others. They are variously interlinked through other secondary themes such as change and decision-making, which both require a measure of leadership and collaboration. Further, the responses suggest that DEI, a global contemporary aim, can only be achieved through those found to be secondary themes: data and metrics, collaboration, and strong leadership.
