The Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC) has decided to reformulate its relationship with companies to make better use of the assets it already possesses, often inaccessible to the vast majority due to not knowing of their existence or how to find them, and thus guarantee greater technological transfer, the great pending subject of the university system. It also has to serve to maximize the resources it obtains through agreements with companies, with more than 1,900 agreements and research projects underway. Currently, 25% of the total funds it obtains for R&D comes from the private sector, a figure that last year stood at 20 million euros.
"We would like the first thought that comes to companies' minds when they have a problem to be to call the UPC because they know we will give them some good idea and maybe we will solve it for them. We want to be more present in the imagination of companies and for them to know that we are a resource at their disposal," defends its rector, Daniel Crespo. With that objective, the institution has created a program with which it wants to facilitate the management of the services it provides to companies, often through multiple fronts, and make a wide portfolio of 3,500 researchers and 210 research groups spread across 18 centers located in different cities more accessible.
The new Connèxia program, articulated through the Center for Innovation and Technology (CIT), will establish the figure of a manager, trained at the university but with experience in the industry to know what companies need. They will be responsible for being the point of contact between the UPC and companies, centralizing procedures and preventing them from having to struggle to try to find the department that can help them test a new technology.
"It must serve us to professionalize the relationship with companies," Crespo remarks. But it will not only consist of simplifying procedures, but also a tailor-made suit will be designed for each case. The program will evaluate the needs of companies and define the most appropriate approach to solve them, in addition to detecting new collaboration opportunities. This will include making researchers and laboratories available to them and transferring knowledge, but also helping them attract talent, an increasingly difficult challenge for firms in the face of demand that exceeds supply. "Everything is aimed at companies obtaining value," explains the director of Connèxia, Jordi Martín.
Initially, Connèxia is designed for large and medium-sized companies that already have a relationship with the UPC and want to maintain it in the long term with the desire to "become strategic partners and seek mutual benefit," according to its rector. A three-year agreement will be signed and the annual fee they will have to pay will be 100,000 euros to access a basic package of services, set from the beginning to ensure there is progress but with the capacity to adapt as both parties understand each other better.
The UPC will be the first Spanish university with this model of technology transfer, drawing on the experience of other international centers such as the Polytechnic Institute of Lisbon. The Barcelona university has been testing it for a few years with a multinational based in Catalonia, whose name it cannot disclose. More recently, Fractus, a UPC spin-off that was a pioneer for its internal antennas for mobile phones and became international, has joined. As a result of its participation in Connèxia, a center for disruptive technologies has been created. The third to contract the new program will be Schneider Electric. The forecast is to reach between 15 and 20 companies in the next five years. Later, it is expected to be able to open the program to smaller organizations.
"Companies that have already tried it tell us that before they had a relationship with the UPC, but now they know it well," explains the delegate of the rector attached to the Vice-Rectorate for Transfer, Innovation and Entrepreneurship Josep Lluís Larriba. For the moment, the team behind Connèxia is made up of its director and a first account manager. It is expected that this figure will be in charge of between four and five companies, so more managers will be hired as the client portfolio expands.