Turning the Innovative Behavior in a University Lab into University-Industry Partnership

One of the most relevant role of the university in society development is to prepare professionals and to bring new knowledge and technologies to the world. The Laboratory of Bioengineering (Labbio) of UFMG, Brazil, have been experiencing the development of innovative society-driven products and projects. As a research laboratory the main focus is to conduct research and not necessarily generate and transfer technology of market interest. However, an important characteristic of this lab is the guideline to bring to society the health technologies developed, while maintaining an entrepreneurial mindset in its team, mainly formed by graduate and undergraduate students. The aim of this paper is to analyse the current Labbio partnerships with industry and the innovative behavior help from the researchers that can support and contribute to their increase.
The results show that the existence of the technology transfer office in the university is one of the means of market interface, but the success of the relationships between the university laboratory and companies is also attained due to the established trust and the possibility of continued research. This experience may be an inspiration to other university labs to analyze their human potential to transform their research results into products and to better communicate with the industry.