Bologna Study Visit

Date: 20-22/7/2016

Venue: Bologna - Italy

 

TEJ partners visited Bologna on 20-22 July, 2016 in order to witness and learn from Bologna University’s experience regarding “Research and Knowledge Transfer” and to prepare for the final conference.

Bologna University hosted this visit and prepared a rich program for the participants started with a welcoming speech by Prof. Walid Salameh, the project coordinator, and the representative of University of Bologna whereas he showed the achievements of University of Bologna and some statistics about the university.

After that Prof. Walid talked about TEJ project in general and its aim in strengthening relation between educational and business sectors; he said “we have to struggle linking the universities and the enterprises in our country, we are looking for creative knowledge and have 32 universities which think traditionally. We have to encourage these universities to use the concepts of technology transfer and for that purpose we had different meetings with European partner (Bologna, Alicante, Porto and technical meetings). Dr Walid hoped to conclude the project with tangible outcomes referring to building TTOs and REOs.

TEJ partners delivered a presentations about the progress and the achievements of the TTO offices at their Universities.

After that many presentations were delivered through 2 days of the visit started with “The implementation of the Knowledge Triangle at European and national level: the EU KIC and the Italian Cluster models” by Eleonora Medeot, Chiara Basalti, Future opportunities for collaboration between Unibo and Jordanian universities” by Filippo Sartor, “Entrepreneurial Mindset” by Simone Ferriani, “Knowledge transfer through spin-off companies” by Andrea Ravaioli, “Skills’ requirements in TTOs and training needs” by Cristina Bettini and finally  a general discussion was raised on the TTO mandates (Jordanian universities only) in addition to Roundtable with Giuseppe Conti (head of Research and Knowledge Transfer Department of the University of Bologna).

Participants had the chance to get introduced to people from Bologna University who have a real experience in the University-Enterprise stakeholder environment and raised many discussions regarding the challenges and opportunities faced technology transfer applied at Bologna University and local industry.