Today, on the 23rd of April, the Director of Technology Transfer Centre of Technion University, Mr. Benjamin Soffer, delivered a lecture in the Assembly hall of KFU.
The topic of the lecture was: “Experience of university development introduction into industrial cluster of economy by the example of Technion Technological Institute (Israel).”
The meeting was opened by the President of KFU, Mr. Myakzyum Salakhov, who said that Mr. Soffer had a 20-year work experience in the sphere of innovations. He also noted that Israel occupied the second place after the US by quantity of start-ups and that Technion University would celebrate its 90th anniversary that year. The Director of Investment and Venture Fund of the Republic of Tatarstan, Mr. Aynur Aydeldinov, also said a few words before the lecture.
At the beginning of the lecture Mr. Soffer thanked Kazan University authorities for the opportunity to share his experience with Tatarstan scientific community. Mr. Soffer told the audience about main approaches to research result commercialization. According to him, one should understand that there is no easy way to success. It takes at least 3-5 years to promote projects to the market, and sometimes this process takes dozens of years. It’s also important to be open to changes and not to be afraid to assume risks. “Any project is a lottery. You cannot know in advance what a result you will get. I often met with a situation when the project seemed unlikely to pass patenting procedure, but in fact it managed to enter the market quicker than other projects and brought scientists a great profit. You can forecast many things, but not all. Thus many projects remain neglected at the initial stage namely because of this fear,” resumed Mr. Soffer.
At the end of the event Mr. Salakhov appealed to the students for making conclusions from the lecture: “Namely you, the young people who don’t have rich experience, can make a true breakthrough in science, because you are not restrained by the knowledge that it’s impossible. As you heard today, scientific research activity is of high demand and well-paid nowadays.”