Knowledge transfer at Dutch universities

Knowledge transfer (valorisation) is regarded as the third core activity of Dutch universities next to education and research. It is part of the day to day routine within the university: in start ups and spin offs where students, researcher and entrepreneurs mingle but also in a mix with education and research when student do internships or when researchers take on societal challenges or share their knowledge on TV or the internet. Knowledge transfer at universities is a very old phenomenon, however, it has only been an official core activity of the Dutch universities since 2005.

Recently, universities were asked by the government to give more insight into their knowledge transfer activities and to report on the associated input and output. In consultation with the government and other stakeholders the universities have therefore developed a framework for the development of indicators for knowledge transfer. This framework has been published in the summer of 2013 and currently the universities are working on a first set of indicators to experiment with in the up coming years. An explicit additional goal of the framework is to shed more light on knowledge transfer in the alpha/gamma domain as up to now many indicators for knowledge transfer were more focused on the beta domain.