Strengthening Your Strengths, Solving Your Struggles with Strategic Solutions

Becky Stoughton is a Fuentek vice president, specializing in entrepreneurship and establishing/building TTOs. She worked for 5 years at the Office of Technology Commercialization at the University of Texas at Dallas, playing a key role in launching the office. She also has served on the board of directors for TeXchange and as assistant VP for strategic alliances for AUTM.

In providing technology transfer services to R&D organizations, Fuentek has developed strategies for maximizing team strengths and skills, solving organizational pickles, and communicating value to leadership. Today’s post shares these insights, which can help significantly improve your tech transfer capabilities and performance.

Determine Where You Are and Where You Want to Be

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The adage “knowledge is power” could not be truer when it comes to understanding how your IP management team is performing. To this end, metrics are your greatest ally. They will help you get where you want to go by accurately revealing where you are.

Fuentek worked tirelessly to help us set goals and raise the bar by benchmarking our university against peer and aspirant schools.”

Ah, metrics. They can be a tricky lot to gather. One reason is because useful metrics extend the full length of the tech transfer pipeline. Important early-stage measures, such as the quality of invention disclosures, foreshadow success in post-deal numbers. Weak metrics early on can signal the need to shift priorities to improve outcomes down the road.

And that’s just the direct metrics. There are indirect metrics, too. Tracking things like startup success and other ways your organization contributes to sponsored research and economic development are all important measures of your impact.

Collecting metrics takes time—a well-constructed database helps. And it should be done strategically, meaningfully, and as part of your standard operating procedures. Check out more of our insights and advice on benchmarking and metrics here.

Nurture Talent from Within and from the Start

Out-besting your best does not necessarily mean hiring significant numbers of new staff. We’ve developed some strategies for proactively building up your team from the inside and investing in the future:

Tremendous entrepreneurship training with Fuentek. It will help me a lot in clarifying my ideas!”

Tech Transfer Staff: Onsite and virtual training tailored specifically to technology transfer professionals can add significant value and capabilities to the people you have already invested in. And with tight budgets and growing expectations, it’s time and resources well spent.
Innovators: Your success hinges on researchers keeping the tech transfer process in mind from the first lightbulb. Teach your entrepreneurial researchers about tech transfer tools to increase their chances for success. Even those who don’t want to launch a startup benefit from tech transfer training, so cultivate relationships with those researchers as well.
Interns: As you identify areas where you could use more staff, consider implementing an internship program. Having graduate students conduct market research helps free up your professional staff for other tasks.

Communicate Your Value—and What You Need—to Leadership

The tech transfer road is long and often winding. Making sure senior management understand this timeline can help set expectations appropriately. Also, give them insight into the resources needed at each bend in the road.

This report will be very powerful in helping us engage key stakeholders to make necessary changes. It will also serve as an excellent short-term and long-term road map.”

It’s also important to develop strategies for successful and positive interactions with leadership. Those metrics we talked about earlier? They may require a lot of data gathering, but the good news is that they will help you more thoroughly demonstrate the depth and breadth of your team’s value and where you may need support for growth if you communicate them effectively. Professional-looking presentations and publications can help you do just that—they can be just as effective with your own leaders as they are with potential partners and licensees.

Be Willing to Make Big Changes

Thanks to the services provided by the Fuentek team, our tech transfer program has greatly improved and expanded over the past 3 years.”

At some stage, broad organizational improvements may be needed. Sometimes a reboot is necessary. Sometimes your processes and procedures need streamlining, and this investment will pay off with time and resource savings down the road. We’ve posted lots of our insights on how TTOs become more efficient.

Fuentek can put all of these insights to work for you, with our action-oriented, holistic approach. Our experienced team can help you set these strategies in motion. And if you like, we can implement their full execution. Get in touch today to discuss how Fuentek’s services and expertise can be an extension of your own team.

Categories

Benchmarking & Metrics, Entrepreneurial Ecosystems, Internship Programs, Organizational Analysis, Streamlined Processes & Procedures, Tech Transfer Training