In April, the members of the rapidly growing TechnologieAllianz e.V. teamed up with founders, investors, scientists and politicians for the 3rd TechnologieAllianz Annual Conference. This year’s exchange focused on the question of how tech and life science startups can better succeed. A total of 200 participants shared their experiences and discussed proposals to support start-ups.
A panel moderated by Dr Christian Stein, CEO of Ascenion and member of the board of the TechnologieAllianz, highlighted a topic that regularly leads to intense discussions in practice: Why, when and to what extent should public institutions or their knowledge and technology transfer (KTT) partners take equity in spin-offs? One of the key findings was that research institutions and universities should use shareholdings in conjunction with licensing agreements in order to participate in the value creation of spin-offs without burdening the capital from investors and startups. It is important to create more transparency, e.g. by defining flexible basic conditions and a clear commitment by the institution.
Throughout the various lectures and discussions, participants agreed that startups have a central and growing importance in transferring academic research into real world applications. Therefore, an important role of the KTT partners is to provide professional support to founders and start-up projects, especially in the run-up phase to start-ups.
Further information: Press Release (only in German)