1. Researching without listening to the market
“One of the most common failures in transfer is assuming that the research speaks for itself. The reality is different: many technologies are born without a clear problem to solve or without a sufficiently understood market. This does not happen due to a lack of scientific quality, but rather a lack of conversation.
To avoid this, leading research institutions must incorporate public-private collaboration from the earliest stages. When companies participate early, they help guide expectations, use cases, and potential markets. Industrial mentoring, feasibility studies, and innovation clusters are tools that reduce uncertainty and accelerate the problem-solution fit.
Transfer begins when we understand who it serves, not when we draft a patent.
2. Thinking that good technology is enough
“Another recurring error is believing that innovation is synonymous with technology. A patent is not a product, and a prototype is not a company. Without a business model, a market strategy, and a realistic analysis of the competition, any scientific breakthrough runs the risk of staying in the well-known ‘Valley of Death’: the gap between a promising validation and a viable product.
The solutions lie in adopting a comprehensive innovation management approach: solid business plans, transfer offices with hybrid profiles (science + business), and specific funding to finance proofs of concept and prototypes. When teams think not only about what they have discovered, but about how it will be used, the gap between research and the market closes dramatically.
Technology opens the door, but business is what makes it passable.
3. Underestimating culture and the lack of capabilities
The third error has nothing to do with science or the market, but with culture. Many universities operate with incentives focused on publications, not on transfer. And many researchers, due to their training and career paths, lack the tools to communicate their results to companies, negotiate intellectual property, or analyze business opportunities.
The solution requires a structural change:
- Training in innovation and entrepreneurship as a natural part of academic development.
- Real recognition of transfer within career metrics.
- Fluid mobility between academia and industry to build mutual understanding.
When transfer ceases to be a cultural exception and becomes part of the institutional identity, talent flows and impact grows.
Transferring is not abandoning science: it is expanding its reach.
4. Fearing risk (and leaving researchers to go it alone)
Innovation is neither linear nor certain. It involves technological risk, financial risk, and market risk. However, many academic organizations are conservative by nature. This creates a constant tension: we want impact, but we avoid the risk that makes it possible.
Mitigating this error involves designing institutions that manage risk instead of avoiding it. Flexible internal policies, funds that embrace uncertainty, and mechanisms such as phased licenses—which allow companies to test a technology before committing fully—create environments where experimentation is legitimate.
And most importantly: offering continuous support. Transfer cannot leave researchers alone in a territory they do not know. They need guidance, support structures, and teams that complement their skills.
Risk is not a threat: it is the natural cost of transforming knowledge into value.
5. Building teams without a diversity of skills
The final obstacle is human. Innovating from a laboratory and launching a product into the market require radically different skills. When teams are made up solely of scientific profiles or solely of business profiles, the transfer breaks down due to a lack of translation.
The best practices are clear:
- Multidisciplinary teams from day one.
- “Bilingual” managers capable of translating science into business and business into science.
- Common language, avoiding jargon that is incomprehensible to the other side.
- Spin-offs with hybrid founders, where technical talent and commercial talent move forward together.
Transfer is not carried out by an isolated laboratory: it is carried out by a team capable of speaking two languages at once.
A final invitation: rethinking how we transfer
Knowledge transfer does not fail due to a lack of ideas, but due to a lack of integration. Between science and the market, there exists a space full of opportunities, but also of confusion, misaligned incentives, and skill gaps. Recognizing these five errors is the first step toward building an ecosystem where knowledge is not only generated, but flows, arrives, and transforms.
In a context where Europe demands more mature metrics and where institutions seek to increase their impact, the question we ask ourselves from La Brújula de la Innovación is simple:
What if the real challenge is not transferring technology, but transferring culture, collaboration, and purpose? Because, in the end, innovation moves when someone dares to ask: Why not?
