Knowledge Exchange Without Borders: Insights from a Global Forum

In late October I spent a week with other representatives from Knowledge Exchange (KE), Knowledge Transfer (KT) and Technology Transfer (TT) national associations around the globe. Sponsored by WIPO and AUTM, the International Knowledge and Technology Transfer Leadership Summit 2024 and the Cape Town Tech Transfer Week were designed to enable us to share our experience and knowledge but also to be inspired and challenged by our colleagues around the world.

PraxisAuril is one of the original national associations, alongside the European, Australian and US associations. AUTM the US association, who organised the week, are the oldest association and are celebrating their 50th anniversary year next year.  In addition there were representatives from associations in Africa, Asia and South America. It was truly a global take on knowledge exchange.

Each of these national associations have been established to support their national research systems and enable the sharing best practice between institutions and ultimately to maximize the economic and societal impact from research .

The event was a great chance to reflect on how the UK system and our sector is similar and different to others across the world, and to be reminded in many respects how our system is looked upon as one to learn from.

Praxis’s development has been simultaneous with the development of the UK research system and its growing focus on maxismising impact from all disciplines, through many routes. That requires a wide variety of partnerships with diverse set of organisations that can assist and benefit from that impact. This has only been possible thanks to the support, engagement and encouragement from government for that approach, through initiatives like the Research Excellence Framework (REF), Higher Education Innovation Funding (HEIF) and of course the Knowledge Exchange Framework (KEF) alongside a variety of ways of funding and supporting impact. We are fortunate in the UK  to have the close engagement government and funders, and the support for all disciplines of research to contribute to making the economy and society better.

The whole event was inspiring in terms of the efforts going on around the world, and reinforced the need for associations like ours to:

• Support community and networks of practice
• Train practitioners to do the best job they can
• Support assurance around the quality of our sector’s activities
• Showing the amazing opportunities KE presents to make things better

Something that our upcoming name change will embrace and enable us to continue to do for our members and the sector.

An example of this global collaboration in practice

“Praxis was asked to send a representative to the recent WIPO Standing Committee on the Law of Patents to give the UK perspective on inventorship and ownership legislation cross borders and the impact on the ability to commercialise university intellectual property. Rachel Grovenor, from OUI went as our representative spoke alongside Stephen Susalka from AUTM giving the US perspective and Anita Nel from Stellenbosch University giving the perspective of a developing nation. Each speaker gave a short presentation – the UK presentation focused on the environment created by REF in particular. Then the delegates from each nation were able to ask questions – there was interesting discussion on political impetus that can enhance the culture of technology transfer, as well as universities’ roles in improving access to health-tech in developing nations. The goal is for the Secretariat of WIPO to build up to a full study on best practices and challenges for TTOs.”