It’s tempting to automate tech transfer: matching algorithms, data lakes, and AI summarising research papers in seconds.
Patrick Speedie, co-founder and chief business officer of Inpart, has built software to match university research with corporate partners. And Inpart is integrating increasingly sophisticated AI into its platform, but Speedie is no evangelist.
He’s thought long and hard about the role the technology can, and should, play in research commercialisation. His conclusion? Yes, it crushes administrative grunt work. Yes, better data architecture matters. But the deals that actually close? They still live in relationships, in conference rooms, and in the conversations that software can’t capture.
If you work in tech transfer and you’re caught between “we need to automate everything” and “AI is coming to steal our jobs”, this conversation will change how you think about your toolkit.
