#ENRIITCyourCoffee Season 4 Episode 3 and the ASTP Knowledge Transfer Communities

Welcome to the recap of the #ENRIITCyourCoffee Season 4: Episode 3 “Mobilising Knowledge Transfer Communities” with Laura MacDonald, General Manager at ASTP, on how their knowledge transfer activities can complement and stimulate the activities of ENRIITC.

To find the best areas of complementary activities, Laura started with an overview of ASTP, the premier, pan-European association for professionals involved in knowledge transfer between universities and industry.

Broadly, ASTP aims to enhance the impact of public research on society and the economy.

ASTP has a community of approximately 1200 members in over 54 countries from both academia and industry. ASTP has been running for more than 20 years now, having started off as a networking enterprise.

The core activities at ASTP are as follows:

• Advocating: ASTP represents the interests of members in innovation, K/TT policies and other relevant matters e.g. EU Forum online; EPO; OECD; WIPO.
• Educating: ASTP facilitates the exchange of best practices among K/TT professionals and strengthens their network e.g. https://www.astp4kt.eu/development/professional-development
• Accreditation: ASTP is a part of the global KT accreditation body https://attp.info/- and all training courses are ATTP- approved, enabling participants to work towards RTTP recognition
• Connecting: NAAC: ASTP provides a cooperative platform for national associations of K/TT in Europe. Member Communities: SIGs

All ASTP training and networking events can be seen here and their latest annual knowledge transfer survey is available here.

Another great feature at ASTP is the Special Interest Groups, which are interactive subgroups to share experiences, resources and form sub-communities on specific topic. The current Special Interest Groups are as follows:

• Digital Innovations
• Clinical Innovations
• In-house Legals
• New Professionals
• Social Sciences, Arts & Humanities

To get a better idea of the Special Interest Groups, listen in to Laura starting at 11:40 in the video below. She highlights that, since the ENRIITC community is also wide and diverse like ASTP, perhaps the best collaboration could happen within these groups. Laura explains in a great fashion that the force behind the groups are the shared set of experiences and challenges within the community. Membership can be tailored on a short term basis to fit the members’ needs, e.g., like the creation of a specialist group to solve a particular, short-term problem.

From what Laura presented, it was difficult to not be inspired to join the ASTP community. In the discussion, we explored the crossover of the Special Interest Groups and the challenges of community building during the pandemic. Listen to the discussion starting from 17:16 in the video below.

Laura’s presentation is available here.