Fuentek’s Tech Transfer Blog
Fuentek’s technology transfer experts share their insights
about IP management, technology marketing, TTO operations,
strategic planning, best practices, and more.
about IP management, technology marketing, TTO operations,
strategic planning, best practices, and more.
Three items in the news during the past few days have caught my attention, and I think you should give them yours. They are a report released June 14th by the National Research Council of the National Academies (NRC), a June 19th Congressional hearing on creative approaches to the Bayh-Dole Act, and a report issued June 20th measuring the economic impact of inventions developed at U.S. universities and nonprofit organizations. (Whew, that’s a busy week!)
We recently received a question through our Contact Us page from a tech transfer professional in Scandinavia looking to make LinkedIn an active part of his TTO’s activities. The inquiry concerned whether TTOs are posting technologies on LinkedIn, not merely pointing to the TTO’s own website. I figured my answer might be useful to our blog readers, so I’m sharing it here today.
This month’s list of articles worth reading centers around the topic of entrepreneurship. In some cases, these are technology transfer offices (TTOs) fostering entrepreneurs. In some cases, TTOs are tapping into the expertise of entrepreneurs. And in some cases, the TTOs are being pretty entrepreneurial themselves! So let’s see what we’ve got.
As I get ready for Fuentek’s new webinar on implementing open innovation best practices in technology transfer offices (TTOs), I am reminded of conversations I’ve had with a wide range of tech transfer professionals over the years. What has struck me time and again in these discussions is the broad applicability of open innovation concepts to tech transfer and the value of implementing these concepts in a proactive manner. Despite the fact that government, university, and corporate TTOs vary in their missions, perspectives on innovation, goals/metrics, and economic and entrepreneurial climates, they all have the potential to benefit from implementing sound principles related to open innovation.
We’ve blogged often about how tweets, blogs, and “likes” are key paths by which a technology transfer office’s (TTO’s) messages reach the general public as well as about how effective use of social media can connect TTOs with licensing prospects and potential partners. But federal TTOs face unique challenges. Aside from tight budgets and overloaded staff, these TTOs have to operate within the confines of the highly controlled federal government. So what’s a federal TTO to do?
Last week, a tech transfer professional at a university asked me which patent analysis tools Fuentek uses in our market-based technology assessments. Our conversation then evolved into a discussion about how we use patent mapping as well as the value patent maps provide in evaluating a technology’s commercial potential. I’d like to share with you the perspective that I shared with him. Let me begin by being crystal clear: I firmly believe that analysis tools providing visual maps of the patent landscape play a useful role in…
The urgency is growing surrounding a very important technology transfer issue: the free agency concept. This is the idea put forth by The Kauffman Foundation that university faculty should be able to shop their discoveries to any third party for licensing. A Quick Recap The free agency concept first gained attention in January 2010, when Harvard Business Review called it a breakthrough idea. I blogged at the time that it is, in fact, a naive idea.
My colleague Danielle McCulloch and I had a great time last week presenting our Effective Technology Marketing webinar. If you were watching the #TTOmarketing hashtag, you know that we tweeted quite a bit. Of course, 140 characters isn’t much, so today I’m going to elaborate on a few of my favorite tweets from the webinar. Prep is key in discovering Who What When Where Why How and How Much for yr #techtransfer marketing. I think these seven questions are…
Earlier this month, I was invited to a university tech transfer office (TTO) to discuss ways to get the word out about licensing opportunities. The invitation also was driven by recent changes in the tech transfer industry — specifically, the AUTM® Global Technology Portal (GTP), which allows free posting of tech listings by AUTM members and free searching by all. (Quick definition: A listing is a description of a technology and its possible commercial applications.) With the launch of the GTP, TTOs have another important arrow in their marketing quiver. That’s because this type of passive marketing tool is as essential to TTOs as the active efforts of making phone calls, meeting with prospects at industry conferences, and the like.
Although we’ve been blogging a lot lately about effective technology marketing strategies (especially given our new webinar on this topic), there’s another kind of marketing that we at Fuentek believe is essential for technology transfer offices (TTOs). It might feel like bragging, but communicating the results of technology transfer is as important as executing tech transfer deals. Effective communication tools that illustrate your TTO’s positive achievements demonstrate to your internal and external stakeholders both the value of tech transfer and how successful your TTO is in supporting the mission of your institution. We recently completed a project for NASA that illustrates exactly this idea.
