Although 2012 has only just begun, it’s shaping up to be pretty busy for tech transfer professionals. Several meetings are coming up that will bring folks together to discuss the latest trends and best practices. First off we have the Licensing Executives Society (USA/Canada) winter meeting and the annual meeting of the Association of University Technology Managers (AUTM®)—both of which are taking place in Anaheim, CA the week of March 12th.
Prioritizing an intellectual property (IP) portfolio is an important, and often huge, task for tech transfer offices (TTOs). In today’s Stories from the Field post, I share details of how an effective IP Portfolio Optimization helped a university do more than just prioritize its IP for future technology transfer and marketing efforts. A major research university approached Fuentek about screening a group of 30 technologies in the nanotechnology sector…
Once the technology transfer office (TTO) knows that a technology is fit for commercialization, it’s time to ramp up for actual marketing. This involves a variety of proactive research and planning activities that are critical for successful and cost-effective marketing. Identify the Target Market Developing a roadmap for successful marketing starts with identifying exactly who your prospective licensees are. The best practice is to start by considering the value chain. Because the value chain outlines the primary players in an industry, it is an essential tool to identify target markets and prospective licensees. It can also help ensure that you don’t waste time talking to companies who may be “interested” in your technology because they may want to use it but are not in the right value chain position to license it.
I always enjoy getting to talk with inventors about their innovations, don’t you? True, I don’t get to talk to every innovator for the technologies I see in my work with Fuentek, since we save our inventor interviews for those techs that pass our preliminary screening. But I do get to interview the innovator as we begin planning for technology marketing. With thoughtful preparation and execution, these interviews provide critical insights to guide the tech transfer effort—not to mention help build a solid relationship with innovators.
As you might have noticed from Fuentek’s news feed or on R&D Magazine’s Web site, NASA’s Dryden Flight Research Center has signed a licensing deal with 4DSP. I for one am pretty excited about this tech transfer success because Fuentek has supported Dryden in this effort. Long-time readers of our blog might remember our post about Dryden’s fiber optic shape sensors technology. But our support of Dryden didn’t begin there. We actually started off with a market-based assessment of the technology’s suite of innovations.
I was chatting with a Fuentek colleague last week who had recently run some numbers related to the technology screening work we have been doing for a client. Two facts came up that I wanted to share. The first related to saved patenting costs. We have screened lots of invention disclosures for this client, and over time we’ve rated a total of 134 techs as having low or medium-low commercial potential, recommending that the client not patent them. Cost savings: $3.355 million (assuming $25K/patent). Great news, though not surprising when you do the math on the value of technology screenings. My colleague also showed me the graph below, which charts…
If your technology transfer office (TTO) has a large tech portfolio, you certainly don’t have time to actively market every innovation. Even if your portfolio is on the smaller side, doing so is probably not the most efficient use of your time and resources. Let’s face it, some technologies have greater market potential than others. That’s why Fuentek finds our technology screening process to be critical to efficiently weeding out technologies that are not ready for licensing, helping you get to the best—fast.
If you’ve implemented an internship program at your technology transfer office (TTO) this summer, chances are good that your interns are in the thick of doing technology screenings. How is the program going? What are your lessons learned? Are you seeing areas in which you might consider changes for the intern program next year? We’d love to hear from you. Or maybe your TTO’s interns start in the fall. In that case, you might appreciate some of our lessons learned on hiring TTO interns, training them, and the ongoing mentoring that’s needed.
Regular readers of Fuentek’s blog may recall that our recent webinar about how to perform efficient technology screenings included a Q&A session with the trainers 3 weeks after the initial session. Well, that Q&A session was held yesterday, and …
When first introduced in 1976, supersonic commercial air travel promised Superman-like speed to commercial airlines and the flying public. At least, that was the idea. But when the aircraft traveled faster than the speed of sound, they generated thunde …
