The EU executive is seeking better exploitation of publicly funded
research results and has presented guidelines to help universities
improve their links with industry.

"Making better use of publicly funded R&D is an important problem," states a Commission policy document urging better exploitation of research results. The Communication,
adopted on 4 April 2007, argues that an average university in Europe
generates far fewer inventions and patents compared with North American
counterpart. 

This is said to be largely due to "a less systematic and
professional management of knowledge and intellectual property" in
European universities. Other barriers include cultural differences
between business and science communities, lack of incentives for them
to work together as well as legal barriers hindering co-operation.

The document highlights the need to improve knowledge transfer between research institutions and industry in particular by
creating the right conditions for successful knowledge transfer and by
promoting an entrepreneurial mindset. 

It proposes, in its annex, voluntary guidelines to help universities, research and technology organisations and other publicly funded R&D bodies to do so.

The guidelines highlight good practice regarding the management and
transfer of knowledge and intellectual property and aim to help
research institutions identify shared interests and mutually beneficial
knowledge-transfer arrangements with industry. 

The documents follow a public consultation (Spring 2006) on stakeholder views on the existing knowledge
transfer systems in Europe and on the changes needed to facilitate
academia-industry interactions.

A group of high-level industry and academic actors will be launched
in 2007 to further reflect and develop these guidelines and to provide
advice on other possible actions to promote knowledge transfer in
Europe.