156 Finance – Challenges of the Future TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER – FINANCING OPPORTUNITIES AND LIMITS IN EUROPEAN UNION Assoc. Prof. Laura GIURCĂ VASILESCU, PhD Ec. Maria BUŞE Nicoleta DRĂCEA, PhD student University of Craiova 1. Introduction The technology transfer is the transfer process of research results obtained by universities or research centers to the market but also the transfer of know-how, technology or expertise from one organization to another or the transfer of technology among the industrial sectors. In recent years, the technology transfer was considered an important tool for promoting economic growth and creating jobs. Although Europe has a strong scientific and technological basis, this potential is not properly valorized and the main cause is the lack of investment funds, particularly in the early stages of business development. This failure was increased by the effects of international financial crisis, experienced by most countries. 2. Financing in the early stages of the companies Transforming the research, development and innovation projects in business success depends largely on financing in the early stages of a company. In this phase, a company will use the financing sources (named”seed capital”) for research and development, for a prototype of the concept/idea or for a market study. The "seed" stage is considered as being the first development stage for a company. It can be identified also a "pre- seed" stage, in which can be just evaluated the concept. Therefore, for the early stages of business development (previous to the start-up), the companies need the pre-seed and seed capital. The pre-seed capital is necessary for a training period of 2-3 years before the establishment of a new company in order to finance a minimum market analysis, the competitive analysis and to provide access to intellectual property rights. The seed capital is used for research and development of an initial concept before the business get to the start-up phase. Therefore, the seed capital financing is required when are created spin-out companies (i.e., a new company created to commercialize the results of research institutes/research centers). The concept of spin-out has emerged as a feature of the spin-off, the difference between them consists in the fact that a spin-out is completely independent from the entity it has separated. Thus, the spin-out companies will get the intellectual property, the technology or existing products from the parent organization of which they split off and they will turn them into products or services. The banking credits are a primary source of financing used for business start-ups but the risks and uncertainties hinder the granting of loans for spin-out companies. These companies do not have a history in order to estimate future cash flow and have no assets to provide