Lita Nelsen, director of Technology Licensing Office (TLO), the technology transfer office of Massachusetts Institute of Technology, gave the final keynote at the Global Corporate Venturing Symposium today, providing an overview over what TLO does and why.
“We are a small university,” Nelsen said. “The entering undergraduate class is just over a thousand. But we make a lot of noise.”
Technology transfer is not a money-maker, Nelsen stated, revealing that returns are very limited. Indeed, licensing has only returned $2.6bn for a research base of $63.7bn, a rate of 4.1%.
However, she pointed out that creating spin-outs has never been the goal of research, but rather a by-product; the university’s impact on the economy, students and job creation has a much higher value. In fact, big winners are rare when it comes to spin-outs, while only some spin-outs break even and the majority fail.
Investments in spin-outs have been increasing over the past few years however, which is a good thing on the one hand, but on the other hand this development has led Nelsen to think that the industry may be approaching another bubble.
Using an analogy to explain the consequences of a collapse, she said: “The degree of the hangover is proportional to the degree of inebriation.”
Despite this fear, Nelsen explained, TLO’s mission is ultimately a hopeful one, aiming to create a culture of innovation and a nourishing ecosystem that will lead students to graduate with a sense that they, too, can form companies.
“Failure is not a black mark,” she remarked. “It is a learning experience.”