At Fuentek, we enjoy working collaboratively with our clients to implement innovative outreach strategies. In October 2011, Fuentek had the privilege of helping a forward-thinking team at NASA’s Glenn Research Center — led by Dr. Paul Bartolotta — to organize an Automotive Workshop. Although Glenn had dozens of technologies that would be of enormous interest to automotive companies, they did not routinely interact with major players in the auto industry. And they didn’t want to push out all of their potentially relevant technologies to see which might catch the attention of auto industry executives. Instead, Glenn wanted to…
When moving from the screening into the assessment phase of IP management, it’s important to keep an open mind—and open ears—during the market-based assessment. I say “ears” because Fuentek assessments include interviews with industry experts, which provide extremely valuable market information that guides decisions about how, where, and when—or even whether—to begin marketing the technology. Listening carefully to what industry experts have to say about the market’s needs with respect to the technology lets you know which action is most appropriate. And in some cases, this means not merely holding off on marketing but actually stopping the assessment early. Let’s take a look at a real-world example.
As we have been getting ready for the “Stop Reacting, Start Proacting” webinar, we’ve been recalling some of our experiences over the years conducting market-based technology assessments. These experiences have taught us the importance of carefully considering the market’s view of a technology before launching into marketing. For example, Fuentek’s rapid screening of a polishing technique for optics showed potential for use in mirrors, lenses, and molds for optical components. Based on the screening, we ranked the technology’s commercialization potential as medium-high, and the client agreed it was worth moving on to the next step: a market-based technology assessment.
The flow chart below merges together what Henry Chesbrough describes as the two parts of open innovation -— outside-in and inside-out. We have a several recommendations for proceeding systematically and proactively. Let’s scratch just a little bit bene …
Karen Hiser’s recent post about qualifying prospects in order to get to a licensing deal was also reminiscent of our experiences with helping Fuentek clients get to collaborative R&D partnership deals. Although in many ways these deal-making proces …
The following text was published in The New Small: How a New Breed of Small Businesses Is Harnessing the Power of Emerging Technologies by Phil Simon. We are grateful to Phil for profiling Fuentek in his book and for granting us permission to reprint this excerpt. … [Laura] Schoppe founded her company in February of 2001 and embraced a virtual workforce from day one. The cost savings from not maintaining a proper office are self-evident. Her staff consists of a variety of folks: pure techies, editors, and graphic designers. She hires only those with a keen sense of business as well as solid technical skills. These people are critical in assessing the commercial viability of a particular application and meeting her clients’ needs.
As one of the most important discoveries in the field of applied mathematics in NASA history, HHT is a revolutionary, adaptive set of signal-analysis algorithms. This innovation had great commercialization success with multiple licenses and more than 400 Software Usage Agreements. Fuentek played a major role in the successful commercialization of NASA’s HHT technology.
NASA photo Innovators at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center have developed a compact, lightweight gas sensor that the agency’s technology transfer program is making available for licensing. Using interferometric and spectroscopic techniques, the senso …
The Non-Destructive Evaluation (NDE) team at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center is looking for a partner that can provide information and expertise to support a study of how defects are created during various friction stir welding (FSW) techniques. In …
NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center has developed a novel position sensor with gap-sensing capabilities that, when combined with three other new technologies, provides a wide range of new sensor tools. Each of the technologies included in this suite pr …
