Sustainability as a criterion of viability, not as a label
There is a widespread misconception in the innovation ecosystem: treating sustainability as a communication criterion. It is added to the dossier, appears in the results report, is mentioned in the call for proposals. But it rarely enters into the design of the transfer from the outset.
This has direct consequences. A technology that does not consider its environmental, social, or systemic impact in its architecture is not just an incomplete technology: it is a technology that will encounter barriers to adoption, institutional resistance, and, in many cases, incompatibility with the regulation to come.
The question that any transfer office, any R&D&I team, or any corporation evaluating a partnership with a startup should be asking is not “does it have some sustainability?”, but “can it function without it?” If the answer is yes, the project is probably not designed for the world it will encounter when it leaves the laboratory.
The problem of deferrable impact
Uno de los obstáculos más frecuentes en transferencia sostenible es lo que podría llamarse el problema del impacto demorable: el beneficio ambiental o social no se materializa en el momento de la transacción, sino más tarde, cuando la solución lleva tiempo funcionando en el mundo real.
Eso genera un desfase difícil de gestionar. Los incentivos del ecosistema —plazos de proyecto, métricas de output, tiempos de inversión— están calibrados para resultados rápidos. El impacto sostenible, en cambio, necesita tiempo para medirse, acumularse y demostrarse.
The answer is not to resign oneself to the gap, but to design traceability from the outset. To define what is going to be measured, when and with what evidence before the project begins. To establish impact milestones, not just technological milestones. To integrate outcome indicators into collaboration agreements, not just when presenting the final report.
This logic connects with the open debates in Europe on transfer metrics: if we only measure what is easy to count, we leave out precisely what gives strategic meaning to transfer.
What it means to design sustainable transfer
Talking about sustainable transfer is not just talking about green technologies or projects with an ESG label. It is talking about how the transfer process itself is built: which alliances are activated, how the value generated is shared, who has access to the knowledge produced and under what conditions.
There are three dimensions which, in practice, make the difference:
- Joint design. The transfers with the greatest real impact are not those that an institution delivers to a company: they are those that are built between both from the problem. This requires opening the R&D process before the solution is closed, and accepting that the knowledge of the receiving actor —their operations, their constraints, their market— is also valid knowledge.
- Shared governance. A sustainable transfer does not end when the licence is signed or the agreement is formalised. It needs mechanisms for monitoring, review and adjustment over time. This is especially relevant when the expected impact is systemic: it is not managed with a one-off contract, but with a structured relationship.
- Coherence between objectives and incentives. One of the great short-circuits of the transfer ecosystem is the distance between what is declared —social impact, ecological transition, technological sovereignty— and what is measured and rewarded in practice. If research teams continue to be evaluated only on publications and patents, and companies continue to prioritise time-to-market over impact, sustainability does not enter the model: it enters the discourse.
Compass’ conclusion
Knowledge transfer with real impact is not the one that moves the most technology, nor the one that formalises the most contracts. It is the one that manages to make something really change in the system it targets.
Sustainability does not guarantee that change on its own. But its absence makes it very difficult. Because an innovation that is not designed for the world in which it is going to live —a world with climate demands, regulatory pressures, interconnected ecosystems and actors demanding traceability— is an innovation that arrives late or does not arrive.
The question worth asking is not whether we include sustainability in the project. It is whether the project could sustain itself without it.
