TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER FROM ACCELERATOR LABORATORIES

By using empirical examples this paper presents several practical mechanisms on how to catalyst technology transfer from big-science laboratories to a particular member state and its industry. The underlying case is that of Finland and CERN. Special focus is on development projects between industry, especially with small and medium sized companies, which have introduced prototype products to CERN, and further developed them into fully commercialised goods. 1 MOTIVATION In Europe [7, 11], worth some 20 b$ of public money is annually spent on purchasing technology-oriented equipment from industry of which 2b$ are for intergovernmental, scientific research projects. In all the amount of contributions poured into experimental scientific research is much greater as participating nations channel through their own research and industrial structures funding which eventually contributes basic research. To better exploit this massive investment the paper shows through couple cases how the intangible benefits obtained from big-science collaboration outperform the direct money-driven assessment metrics of technology transfer. It is shown that the benefits stemming from well-concerted development projects between industry and science laboratory generate multiple benefits, not all of them being measurable, but serving the objectives of science, public sector and commerce. The focus of this paper is on cases with strong development thrust. The main case concerns a software development project, which after several twists ended up to a spin-off company [4]. This is followed with two shorter cases of which the first one describes how to develop new skills through high-tech collaboration between a small and medium sized company (SME) and big-science laboratory. The second one deals with the