Effective Technology Marketing: 
Stop Reacting, Start Proacting: Planning for Strategic Technology Marketing
A Step-by-Step Process for Technology Screenings: Technology Triage for TTO Professionals and Interns
How We Rode the Social Media Wave: Lessons Learned from a Technology Marketing Effort
Implementing Open Innovation: 
Future webinars are in the works. 
Our Blog
University and Government Focus—Addressing Specific Situations
Although their approaches to IP management processes and other best practices are the same, tech transfer offices at academic and government institutions—both in the U.S. and worldwide—have unique goals and obligations. Fuentek provides these insights to help university and government TTOs excel in the areas that are specific to them. Note: Items marked with a 
provide in-depth insights with extensive details – registration is required to access this free information.
Interns can be a valuable asset for a TTO, but success requires proper structuring and a significant investment in training and mentoring of interns. Fuentek provides these insights to help you structure an effective internship program. Note: An internship program should not be undertaken as a cost-cutting maneuver. See Fuentek's other insights on keeping costs down.
Key Insights
- Developing an Effective Internship Program for Your University’s Technology Transfer Office
Insights into some of the best practices learned at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign (UIUC), which is described in an accompanying case study. - How to Structure an Effective Internship Program
Interns can be a great help if you structure the internship program right.
- TTO Intern Success Is a Two-Way Street
It’s tempting to think of interns as cheap/free labor. But you must invest in them before they can provide a valuable return to the TTO.
- Considering the “Why?” of Interns and Technology Screenings
Using interns for screenings allows tech managers to spend their time focusing on the real end-game: getting deals.
- Stories From the Field: Lessons Learned in Training Interns
Even the best interns will flounder if improperly trained.
- Stories From the Field: Insights for Intern Training and Mentoring
Provide nuanced guidance over time.
- Timing Is Everything: For Maximum Success, Start Planning Now for Next Summer’s Internship Program
More and more universities tech transfer offices are making use of student interns. Now is the time to add one to yours.
- Need Tech Transfer Interns Next Summer? Now Is the Time to Get Started
Think fall is too early to think about summer interns? Let’s back it out.
- Spring Is Turning Up Interns!
What to look for in intern candidates.
Other Insights
- Internship Program Success Stories from AUTM 2012
Describes an AUTM 2012 panel discussing best practices for technology transfer office internship programs. Includes our “Top 10 Hints Your Tech Transfer Internship Program Is in Trouble.”
- Tapping Young Talent During Lean Times: A Great Idea, but Proceed with Caution
With the right training program, students can be a huge help to TTOs both when times are tight and when budgets are flush.
- Commercializing Federally Funded Research: Paper Lays Out Roadmap
A new paper answers the question: How do TTOs find and commercialize the high-potential technologies efficiently (i.e., with their available resources and in a reasonable amount of time)?
- External Advisory Boards: A Short-Term Tool for Tech Transfer (or “Not Mr. Right, but Mr. Right Now”)
Advice about when and how to use external advisory boards, and the limitations of using such committees on an ongoing basis.
- Getting Faculty on Your Side through Systematic Screening and Interns: Stories from the Field
How to turn around a faculty that’s in revolt against the TTO.
- Reaping Long-Term Rewards from Strategic IP Portfolio Screening: Stories from the Field
How an efficient and effective IP portfolio screening helped a university do more than just prioritize its IP for future technology transfer and marketing efforts.
- Worth Reading (and Wearing) for Halloween
(Oct. 2012) Student-Run Consulting Group Offers More Than Traditional Interns for Washington U’s OTM, The Seeds That Federal Money Can Plant and a legislative summary from BIO, What the NY Times Doesn’t Understand about the Patent System, the NIH Plan for Accelerating Technology Transfer and Commercialization of Federal Research in Support of High Growth Businesses, and STEM-related costumes for Halloween
- Choosing Your Path Toward a Career in Tech Transfer
First-hand insights on how graduate students and postdocs can break into careers in tech transfer.
Key Insights
- Questions Raised by “Free Agency” Tech Transfer Provisions in Startup Act
Key questions to be answered before the “free agency” provisions in the Moran–Warner Startup Act can be realistically implemented.
- Commercializing Federally Funded Research: Paper Lays Out Roadmap
A new paper answers the question: How do TTOs find and commercialize the high-potential technologies efficiently (i.e., with their available resources and in a reasonable amount of time)?
- A White House Meeting Revives Tech Transfer Recommendations
How a proactive, phased approach to commercialization would quickly, cost-efficiently, and effectively achieve the Obama Administration’s goals.
- Enhancing Economic Development through Technology Transfer of Federal- and State-Funded R&D Offers specific ways that government/university TTOs and economic development agencies can contribute to a mutually beneficial partnership.
- Talking Tech Transfer with the President’s Ear: Yesterday’s Jobs Council Roundtable
Laura Schoppe tells the Jobs Council that government and university innovations can fuel economic development, but it doesn’t happen in a vacuum.
- How College Rivalry Disrupts Entrepreneurship
Cross-institution collaboration is not the norm in the Triangle. But it should be!
- Insights, Best Practices on Tech Transfer, Startups at Portugal Meeting
Perspectives from an international group of technology transfer leaders sharing information and best practices on startups, entrepreneurship, innovation, commercialization, and more.
Specific Tactics
- License Programs Targeted at Startups: We Can (and Must) Do Better
Well-intentioned programs are a step in the right direction, but many suffer from a few shortcomings.
- Open Innovation “Loser” Redux: More thoughts, new webcast
Insights into universities’ history as open innovation players, what is expected of them now, and how Symbiotic Innovation — and maybe new metrics — will get them there.
- Conversations with DoD & the White House on Federal Tech Transfer Initiatives
Fuentek recommendations for increasing the likelihood and efficiency of getting research results to market.
- Ready-to-Sign Licensing Agreements: Does One Size Fit All?
Standard agreements are useful but are best used judiciously and in certain specific situations.
- Applying the AMMO to Tech Transfer Events: Stories from the Field
Specific details of how Fuentek helped a client accomplish a successful tech transfer outreach event designed to promote economic development.
- Leveraging Industry Associations to Attract Tech Transfer and Strategic Partnerships
A focus on understanding market needs leads to a collaboration that is generating big results in technology transfer marketing.
Other Insights
- Dear Santa, Please Make Congress Behave
Three examples of how uncertain funding for R&D and tech transfer — which has been particularly bad for the past several years due to budgeting via continuing resolution– has expensive and significant short- and long-term impacts.
- Getting Their Tech Transfer Act Together: Examples Abound around the World
University TTOs in New Zealand, Ireland, and Israel have been — or are starting to — coordinate their efforts.
- Redefining Metrics: AUTM Eastern Region Attendees Discuss the Start-Up Dichotomy
The disconnect between having start-ups and revenue as primary metrics. Consider our white paper, “How’d We Do?: Establishing Useful Technology Transfer Metrics.”
- Why University TTOs Are Getting a Bad Rap—and Why That’s Just Not Right
There is a systemic problem and piling the blame on TTOs is not fair. But it’s not that university TTOs are clueless; it’s that the TTOs are under-resourced.
- Worth Reading (and Wearing) for Halloween
(Oct. 2012) Student-Run Consulting Group Offers More Than Traditional Interns for Washington U’s OTM, The Seeds That Federal Money Can Plant and a legislative summary from BIO, What the NY Times Doesn’t Understand about the Patent System, the NIH Plan for Accelerating Technology Transfer and Commercialization of Federal Research in Support of High Growth Businesses, and STEM-related costumes for Halloween
- Worth Reading: New Reports, Congressional Testimony
(June 2012) National Research Council’s “Research Universities and the Future of America: Ten Breakthrough Actions Vital to Our Nation’s Prosperity and Security” report, U.S. House Subcommittee on Technology and Innovation hearing on “Best Practices in Transforming Research into Innovation,” and BIO’s “The Economic Contributions of University/Nonprofit Inventions in the United States: 1996–2010″ report.
- Worth Reading: Entrepreneurial Tech Transfer Offices (and more on patent trolls)
(May 2012) Examples from the University of Virginia, Purdue University, Arizona State University, the University of Michigan, and Colorado schools working with the Innovation Center of the Rockies. Also clips related to Canadian government support for innovative partnerships between colleges and businesses and patent trolls.
- Worth Reading: University Responsibilities, the Patent System, Killing Startups, Free Agency, and Noteworthy TTOs
(Feb. 2012) What Responsibilities Should Universities Bear?; The University as Job Laboratory; Kodak Is in Bankruptcy, but Its Hometown Hasn’t Lost Its Sparkle; Innovation Is Hard; No, the Patent System Is Not Broken; Universities, Inventors, and the Bayh-Dole Act; and news from Vanderbilt, Michigan universities, the University of Colorado, and NASA.
- Upcoming Session Discusses How To Leverage Government Resources for University Start-ups
Laura Schoppe discusses how SBIR/STTR funding can help start-up companies move concepts forward to prototyping.
- Fostering Collaboration between Tech Transfer and Economic Development Organizations
A preview of a panel on the mutually compatible interests between regional ED agencies and TTOs at university and government labs. Consider our white paper, “Enhancing Economic Development through Technology Transfer of Federal- and State-Funded R&D.”
- NASA Showcases Innovation Impacts at Technology Day on the Hill
Describes NASA’s Technology Day on the Hill 2012 in Washington, DC.
- Preliminary Poll Results Tie in with Economic Development and Collaboration Panels at AUTM Eastern Region Meeting
Economic development is not always linked to start-ups.
- Raleigh Innovation Summit Sparks Lots of Ideas
Ideas for creating an innovation center in Raleigh, branding Raleigh as a city of innovation, creating partnerships, and bringing more money to the region.
In addition to the best practices for running a TTO, the way a university or government tech transfer office is structured can have an impact on efficiencies and effectiveness. Fuentek provides these insights to help academic and government TTOs focus on the big picture.
Key Insights
- Prerequisites and First Steps When Creating a Tech Transfer Office
The blueprint for implementing Symbiotic Innovation.
- Commercializing Federally Funded Research: Paper Lays Out Roadmap
A new paper answers the question: How do TTOs find and commercialize the high-potential technologies efficiently (i.e., with their available resources and in a reasonable amount of time)?
- How’d We Do?: Establishing Useful Technology Transfer Metrics This white paper provides research-based recommendations for measuring performance and success of tech transfer programs in government, academic, and corporate institutions.
- A White House Meeting Revives Tech Transfer Recommendations
How a proactive, phased approach to commercialization would quickly, cost-efficiently, and effectively achieve the Obama Administration’s goals.
- How a Centralized Technology Transfer Office Helps Build Stronger Universities
Intra-campus centralization as well as cross-campus coordination and the consolidation of certain activities make the tech transfer process more streamlined and efficient.
- Proactively and Strategically Managing Innovation (or Tips for Avoiding the Tech Transfer Chasm): A Free Webinar
This webinar provides advice on identifying and implementing strategies to achieve technology transfer success. Ideal for organizations looking to become a proactive, efficient, and effective tech transfer office (TTO).
- Fostering Collaboration between Tech Transfer and Economic Development Organizations
A preview of a panel on the mutually compatible interests between regional ED agencies and TTOs at university and government labs. Consider our white paper, “Enhancing Economic Development through Technology Transfer of Federal- and State-Funded R&D.”
Other Insights
- Questions Raised by “Free Agency” Tech Transfer Provisions in Startup Act
Key questions to be answered before the “free agency” provisions in the Moran–Warner Startup Act can be realistically implemented.
- Getting Their Tech Transfer Act Together: Examples Abound around the World
University TTOs in New Zealand, Ireland, and Israel have been — or are starting to — coordinate their efforts.
- Conversations with DoD & the White House on Federal Tech Transfer Initiatives
Fuentek recommendations for increasing the likelihood and efficiency of getting research results to market.
- Getting Faculty on Your Side through Systematic Screening and Interns: Stories from the Field
How to turn around a faculty that’s in revolt against the TTO.
- How College Rivalry Disrupts Entrepreneurship
Cross-institution collaboration is not the norm in the Triangle. But it should be!
- Why University TTOs Are Getting a Bad Rap—and Why That’s Just Not Right
There is a systemic problem and piling the blame on TTOs is not fair. But it’s not that university TTOs are clueless; it’s that the TTOs are under-resourced.
- Worth Reading: Entrepreneurial Tech Transfer Offices (and more on patent trolls)
(May 2012) Examples from the University of Virginia, Purdue University, Arizona State University, the University of Michigan, and Colorado schools working with the Innovation Center of the Rockies. Also clips related to Canadian government support for innovative partnerships between colleges and businesses and patent trolls.
- Worth Reading: University Responsibilities, the Patent System, Killing Startups, Free Agency, and Noteworthy TTOs
(Feb. 2012) What Responsibilities Should Universities Bear?; The University as Job Laboratory; Kodak Is in Bankruptcy, but Its Hometown Hasn’t Lost Its Sparkle; Innovation Is Hard; No, the Patent System Is Not Broken; Universities, Inventors, and the Bayh-Dole Act; and news from Vanderbilt, Michigan universities, the University of Colorado, and NASA.
- Preliminary Poll Results Tie in with Economic Development and Collaboration Panels at AUTM Eastern Region Meeting
Economic development is not always linked to start-ups.
- Partner with Internal Resources to Optimize Social Media Efforts
An overview of social media tips specifically for federal TTOs, discussed at the 2012 meeting of the Federal Laboratory Consortium for Technology Transfer (FLC).
