If you’ve been through the long process of evaluating many technologies for commercialization, you know the feeling that comes with seeing the potential of the best innovations as they rise to the top. But what do you do when you can see the amazing potential of a technology, and yet still know that it needs more development time before it’s ready for licensing? Give it the time and resources it needs to ripen. That’s today’s story from the field.
Recently, Fuentek was called upon by a client to market a portfolio of innovative energy technologies that could be useful in emerging commercial markets. As we all know, deals are the name of the game in technology transfer. However, marketing a technology requires resources, so careful consideration should be given to the likelihood of success (signing a license) before embarking down that path. Here at Fuentek, we believe it’s important to first confirm the market interest in a technology before expending resources on marketing it.
So, true to our philosophy, we first conducted a market-based assessment. We began by interviewing the inventors and learned that they were in need of additional support to continue their work since their current funding was ending within months. As we reached out to potential licensees, we found they had strong market interest but also indicated a clear need for further development before that interest could yield fruit.
Rather than just reporting to our client the “no, thank you” on licensing, we engaged with and received strong commitments of partnership interest from organizations with the potential to increase the technology’s level of development and make it into an attractive licensing candidate. Even better, some of these potential partners would also be good licensing candidates, assuming that further technology development was successful. (A great example of the interdependent nature of spin-in and spin-out—the essence of Symbiotic Innovation.)
Despite the need to slow things down and return to development before a license could be put in place, our client was thrilled. They were happy that they had not wasted time and money marketing a technology that was not yet viable for licensing. In addition, there was a strong possibility that we had found a partner (and a means for obtaining funding through joint grant submissions) to support the inventors’ work to advance the development level of the technology. A win-win across the board!
Lesson learned: Even if the market is chomping at the bit for what your technology could be, make sure you give it the necessary time to ripen before rushing into a license agreement. By applying Symbiotic Innovation and keeping your mind open, your work along the way may just give you the resources you need to take the technology to that next step.
Are you employing our Symbiotic Innovation approach to your IP portfolio and innovation efforts? What have you found works when applying both spin-out and spin-in efforts simultaneously? What challenges have you seen?
