It is true that transfer is more difficult in social sciences and humanities. That is why we talk about technology transfer in natural sciences and medicine, and about the transfer of knowledge into practice in softer fields. However, it usually involves combining technology with knowledge, such as in our spin-off company Charles Games , where the IT environment is combined with innovative pedagogical approaches and, together with historians, games from the serious games genre are created, which in some cases can also be used as a teaching tool in schools. It is important to note that social sciences and humanities have fewer technical barriers to market entry, for example, compared to pharmacy or medicine, which are among the most regulated industries in the world and between an idea and a product there are years of work and financial costs of up to tens of billions of crowns.
CUIP is a subsidiary company owned 100% by Charles University. What benefits does the university get from this? Can the profit for the university, or for a specific workplace, be quantified?
There are basically two benefits. First of all, by applying kenya telemarketing technology in society, it fulfills its third role, i.e. in addition to education and research, it also fulfills a social role. It is great when a scientist develops a new drug, but until you buy it in a pharmacy, you will not fully appreciate this benefit, and that is precisely what technology transfer is. The university receives positive media coverage for successful commercialization; last year alone, we were in the media 400 times, for example, in Forbes, Hospodářské noviny, Česká televiňa, CNN Prima News and dozens of other media. In addition to media coverage, there are of course financial benefits. The income from the transfer is divided between the inventors who invented the technology, the faculty where the inventors work, and CUIP, which is financed and motivated in this way. After three years of operation, we have already earned more for the University than our operation cost, and we are in the black, although the business plan did not foresee this turning point until the tenth year of operation.
Who analyzes ideas for suitable commercialization at your company and what criteria do they use?
We have our own analyst and several collaborating experts. We evaluate ideas from two perspectives: from the perspective of industrial and legal protection, i.e. whether we can possibly protect the technology from theft or copying, and secondly from a business perspective. Here we focus on the so-called commercial potential. We analyze how many potential customers there are, how much it would cost to launch the product on the market, what the return is, what the state of the competition is and many other aspects. The result is a technology commercialization strategy.
