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.
For technology-based companies, universities and government labs are a great resource for reducing the risk, cost, and time to market for new products. Not only have they extensive capabilities, expertise, and intellectual property (IP) portfolios, but they also have a growing interest in collaborating with industry. Companies wanting to pursue partnerships with university/government labs now have a new resource to consult for how-to advice.
As 2015 draws to a close, we take a look back at some of the news and commentary related to innovation management, technology transfer, intellectual property protection, entrepreneurship, and the future of STEM education that held our attention this past year. Plus a few of our favorite tweets! Happy New Year!
Earlier this fall, I gave a guest lecture to the Electrical and Computer Engineering students at the North Carolina State University. Mostly my presentation focused on how to present their Senior Design Project effectively. But I also gave some career advice that I’d like to share here today. So, if you’re an undergraduate student in engineering, consider this.
Keep in mind that many of the judges are shopping for employees. This is your chance to impress them. You might get a job out of it. Plus, the skills we’re talking about today are relevant for the rest of your life: getting a job or your next slug of funding, pitching projects internally, negotiating for salary/promotion. Even if you become a professor, you’ll be selling all the time as you try to get lab equipment or funding. Like it or not, you will constantly be selling for the rest of your professional life in order to advance your career.
Technology Transfer Tactics ran an in-depth article on best practices for handling departing faculty researchers, post-docs, visiting researchers, and the like. As one of the sources quoted, I was pleased to see the thorough treatment this topic received, because bad things can happen if you don’t stay in front of intellectual property (IP) issues when it comes to transitioning faculty…. There was a lot of great advice in the article. Here’s my take on a few key recommendations.
Gathering and analyzing market data may be at the heart of developing the technology transfer strategy, but its value is not limited to the go/no-go decision and planning how to move forward. There are some less obvious but extremely impactful ways that market data can be a useful tool for a tech transfer office (TTO). Here are four projects I’ve worked on recently that illustrate some of the powerful ways your TTO can make use of market data.
The Composites and Advanced Materials Expo (CAMX) is going on this week in Dallas, and Fuentek’s Jaffer Hussein is there representing NASA and its portfolio of materials and coatings technologies. This portfolio of breakthrough innovations will benefit industrial, commercial, and residential uses and is organized on a website to make it even easier for prospective licensees to explore and locate relevant inventions. Stop by Booth ZA-128 to talk to Jaffer about the NASA technologies
Co-authored by Laura A. Schoppe and Richard W. Chylla, Ph.D.Collaboration between well-matched partners is a synergistic way for a company to enter a clearly defined, adjacent market based on breakthrough technology to achieve higher growth. University and government labs across the United States collectively represent a potentially useful partner, given that they have capabilities, expertise, and intellectual property (IP) portfolios that support commercial products.
Read about the value provided by foundations that reside outside of the state university structure and own/manage the institution’s intellectual property (IP). Several state universities have implemented foundations to manage their technology transfer programs, entrepreneurship support, and more. These foundations can take advantage of greater flexibility in deal structure, reduced bureaucracy, more autonomy, and a broadening of services. For example,…
Most technology transfer offices (TTOs) want to — or have to — respond to frequently asked questions (FAQs) about the technology portfolio. Whether they are routine or ad hoc, these FAQs often come from key stakeholders and focus on TTO performance. As the F in FAQ suggests, these questions are asked frequently. Yet if a TTO frequently is scrambling to answer and struggles to generate the needed reports, then this indicates something is amiss.
