Next-Practise in University Research Based Open Innovation - From Push to Pull: Case Studies from Denmark

How do we ensure knowledge transfer from universities in the most effective and efficient way? What is the right balance between a push and a pull approach? These issues have been discussed at length and various methods of intermediary facilitating and ways to organise the transfer have been tried in different contextual settings at universities all over the world. Lessons learned are mixed and naturally varies from country to country. This paper presents a recently completed development project concerning the transfer facility at the Technical University of Denmark (DTU). The project focused on the pull function and the capacity development of the SMEs as this was the main lessons learned during the initial phase of the project. The paper also presents four Danish innovation projects that illustrate the use of the pull-based concept.Last but not least, the paper presents a new post-graduate education at DTU in design and management of projects in network. It supports competence development within efficient knowledge transfer. Finally conclusions and recommendations will be presented and discussed based on the above six cases within university research based knowledge transfer. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2013.