The main target group of FORNY is researchers working in universities, university colleges, re-search institutes or university hospitals that have ideas originating from their rere-search which can be developed into commercial activity. FORNY funds activities organised by the research institutions themselves and by the local TTOs that are either owned by the universities or other institutions.
FORNY is organised with a small secretariat within the Research Council of Norway (RCN). The main task of the secretariat is to allocate resources to organisations which are approved for participating in the programme, and to serve as a coordinating body for information exchange and strategic development of the programme. An important aspect of the programme is thus how it organises the commercial activities through the TTOs, characteristics of the TTOs and their strategies for working with the research institutions they are serving.
In order to achieve a status as a TTO in the FORNY programme the TTO must serve research institutions with potentials of generating high-quality ideas and projects for commercialisa-tion. This implies that the TTO must have a formal agreement with one or more research in-stitution which have researchers that generate deal flow for the TTO. When the FORNY pro-gramme was established in 1995, there were six TTOs participating in the propro-gramme. Four represented the universities existing at that time (Oslo, Bergen, Trondheim and Tromsø) and two represented, respectively, the research institutes co-located at Kjeller and the specialised university and related research institutes located at Aas. Later, a number of other TTOs have been included in the programme, and for the time being there are 14 actors participating. An overview is provided in Table 4.1.
Table 4.1 Overview of TTOs participating in FORNY by 2008
Region/TTO Provide TTO-services for Main disciplines / R&D man years*)
Participation in FORNY
Oslo region
Campus Kjeller All research institutes located on Campus Kjeller
Originally the University of Oslo. Now:
Oslo University College, Østfold of Sport Sciences and Oslo School of Architecture and Design
All disciplines (2000)
Since 2004
Medinnova Originally for Rikshopitalet University Hospital, now all hospitals in Eastern and Southern Norway (Helse Sør-Øst)
Medical and health (1250)
Since 2002
Simula Simula Research Laboratory ICT (50-100***)) Since 2005 Southern and Western Norway
Coventure Originally the regional hospital and local businesses. Now University of Agder
All disciplines (150)
Since 2000
Prekubator University of Stavanger, Stavanger University Hospital and two research the university colleges in the region.
All disciplines (200) Since the start in 1995, Sinvent All research divisions in the SINTEF
Group
Technology (900**))
Since 2005 Northern Norway
Norinnova Traditionally for the University of Tromsø. Now: Norut and University College of Narvik. Close collaboration with TTO Nord
Technology Since the start in 1995
TTO Nord University of Troms, University hospital of Northern Norway;
University colleges in Northern Norway
All disciplines (900) Since 2005. Close collaboration with Norinnova
*) Data for man years are for 2007, all figures rounded off to the nearest 50.
**) Data refer to the SINTEF divisions located in Trondheim.
***) More precise data cannot be given due to confidentiality.
There TTOs currently participating in FORNY represent a diversified structure. An overview of the TTOs is presented in Table 4.1. The majority of the TTOs serve a local university and in most cases other research institutions located in the same area. Three of the TTOs serve larger universities (i.e. Birkeland Innovation, Bergen Technology Transfer and NTNU Technology Transfer), two TTOs serve medium sized universities (i.e. the Innovation Centre at Aas and TTO Nord/Norinnova), and two serve smaller universities (i.e. Coventure and Prekubator).
Among the remaining seven, there is one TTO specialised on university hospitals (Medinnova) and three on specific research institutes (Campus Kjeller, Sinvent and Simula). Moreover, there are two TTOs that traditionally served as university TTOs, i.e. Oslo Innovation Centre and Leiv Eiriksson Innovation (LEN). However, in both cases their roles have been taken over by new TTOs set up by the respective universities, and they have been left to work with smaller institutions and industry. One of the two TTOs, Oslo Innovation Centre, was phased out of the FORNY programme in the end of 2008.
It appears from the table that there is a mixed pattern of specialisations among the TTOs;
partly they are organised according to a regional pattern, partly there are tendencies of spe-cialisation towards institutions. We find the most specialised structure in the Oslo region, where there is one TTO specialised for the university hospital, three TTOs serving specific research institutes and one university, and one TTO basically serving as a university TTO.
Furthermore, there is also some specialisation in Mid-Norway, with three TTOs serving different parts of the institutions in the region. In the other regions, the TTOs are mostly serving all relevant research institutions, including the university hospitals.
In an analysis of the “biopharma landscape” in Norway provided by the Boston Consulting Group1
A report on European TTOs
, the structure of the Norwegian TTOs has been divided into regional TTOs, university TTOs, institute TTOs and specialised TTOs. In line with what we have said above, the structure is characterised as complex and geographically oriented, and the Oslo region is the only region with specialised TTOs. Moreover, the report concludes that there is a lack of focus on biotech-nology at the national level, and, as far as this sector is concerned, the report comments that there “are reasons to believe that the particular nature of biopharma requires a more focused effort to succeed – in particular to build necessary scale and capabilities”.
2
1 The Boston Consulting Group 2007: The Biopharma Landscape in Norway: Current Status and Future Commercialization Opportunities. Report prepared for the Norwegian Association of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers (LMI).
2 ITTE (2004), European Commission, DG Enterprise, 'Institutions for Technology Transfer from Science to Enterprises in Europe, Technology Transfer Institutions in Europe. Final Report June 2004
have categorised the TTOs according to their attachment to the research institutions; department-type, wholly-owned and independent. The department-type is localised within the university or research institute as one department and the personnel is untenured university staff. The wholly-owned is owned by the university or institute, but
func-tions as an independent non-profit unit. And the independent TTOs serve usually more than one research organisation, and are normally created as a separate private venture extension.
The Norwegian TTOs can be categorised as mainly belonging to the two last groups, however, there are also some that do not fit into these categories.
It is difficult to group the heterogeneous Norwegian TTOs into categories that are useful for an analysis of the organisation of the FORNY programme. This is especially due to the fact that the structure of the TTOs, i.e, the number of TTOs participating in FORNY; their size, their geo-graphical locations, their functions etc, is under continuous development. For instance, the number of TTOs in the programme has doubled from 2000 to 2008, and while some have been included others have been excluded. Hence, the structure of the TTOs will be an important issue for the future organisation of the FORNY programme. This will be further discussed in the summary section of this chapter.