Romanian Innovation Alliance pushes to close the innovation loop

Over the past year, Romanian Alliance has directed their attention to three streams of actions: developing methods for patent transfer from universities to the SMEs, launching platforms to pool national and European project efforts and incorporating mechanisms to facilitate technology transfer process. A solid progress has been achieved for the first two goals, however, the challenges with the expansion of Technology Transfer Offices (TTOs) as links between Romanian businesses and the academic community remain to be tackled.

The gold medal award-winning patent request in the International Exhibition of Inventions Geneva 2015 is currently in the testing phase, which later to be implemented in a market product at a local SME. On the other hand, it is also acknowledged by the alliance that Romanian Universities lack sufficient number of TTOs that hold the key role in transforming the methodology into a common practice across the country. The consortium members thus aim to establish such offices through the alliance in order to guarantee long-term partnerships between HEIs and SMEs.

According to the progress report by the members, collaboration platforms for the joint project submissions have proven productive, with six project proposals already submitted by the project members for the June 2016 National project call  ‘Increasing competitiveness of the Romanian economy through R & D and innovation.’ Other benefits included sustainable business growth for the SMEs, finding outlets for patent transfer for the HEIs, and opportunities for the EU research project participation for the research institutions. The consortium provides unique learning experiences for the graduate students as well, through the training courses which will encourage them starting their own companies, and eventually joining the alliance in the long run.