Today brings us to my final Metrics Monday post on metrics for new — or newly reorganized — technology transfer offices (TTOs). Today’s focus is on how you are doing on those all-important final steps to commercialization: marketing and licensing.

The TTO at virtually any university, non-profit, or government R&D lab is striving to maximize the benefits of the institution’s research to the public. This overarching, long-term goal is coupled with maximizing the “return” to the institution and perhaps the larger community. Of course, the metrics used to calculate that return can vary widely, ranging from generating licensing revenue to securing more research funding to having an impact on the local economy. But regardless, those are all measures that don’t show up for a very long time.

In the meantime, there are ways to measure your progress toward two key near-term goals:

• To ensure that technology is being moved toward the marketplace
• To ensure that the office is effectively building and using a network of contacts in industry as well as the entrepreneurial and finance communities

These short-term goals feed directly into the TTO’s long-term goals. How can you measure progress on these near-term goals? Here are some suggestions:

• Number of networking interactions (e.g., events, meetings, etc.) – This metric is most useful in the very early days of a TTO to ensure you are getting on the right radar screens and will have a robust network to tap in the future.
• Number of interactions with targeted prospects about specific opportunities (e.g., emails, phone calls) – This metric is also most useful in the very early days of a TTO to track marketing efforts.
• Number of non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) and/or material transfer agreements (MTAs) executed – These early-stage agreements also help track engagement with industry.
• Percentage of the TTO’s invention portfolio for which the office is actively engaged in licensing discussions – This is a great way to get a sense of how well your technology-specific marketing efforts are doing.
• Number of licensing and/or sponsored research agreements (SRAs) executed – This metric is key for more established offices, so while likely to be low initially, it will signal growing maturity of the office.
• Amount of sponsored research funding from licensees – This relatively early indicator of the office getting traction may be a very important one, as it is tangible and both easily-understood byand valuable to your researchers. This metric could be complemented by measuring the percent of licensees who also sign SRAs.

Don’t panic! Some of these numbers may be very low in early years. That is to be expected, since you are a new TTO and looking for growth over time while your office is getting established. But it’s important to monitor these metrics — and to continue to do so in the face of one or more zeroes — to ensure an adequate focus on back-end marketing activities. I know it’s easy for a TTO to allocate a lot of resources to front-end outreach to build up the invention disclosure pipeline as well as to invention disclosure processing and patenting activities. These are important areas, but TTOs must not neglect investing in marketing.

BTW, in addition to paying attention to these early-stage metrics, new TTOs should also develop a way to generate a report summarizing their portfolio, primarily for internal purposes, though extracts may be useful for reporting and marketing purposes as well.  You’d be amazed at how many insights can be obtained from such a summary!  I’ll be blogging more about this topic in the future.

Becky’s Metrics for New/Like-New TTOs:

• Invention Disclosure Pipeline
• Productivity in Processing Cases 
• The Marketing and Licensing Pipeline

I’m back with another Metrics Monday post about the types of metrics that new (and newly reorganized) technology transfer offices (TTOs) can monitor while waiting for the long-term metrics to make sense. As noted earlier, these metrics that are measurable in the short term will help ensure your TTO is on the right path to long-term success. Today we’ll focus on productivity and processing cases (i.e., invention disclosures).

Ensuring that invention disclosures and your technology portfolio are being processed effectively is key to keeping the office running efficiently. As your office matures, the TTO’s productivity in processing cases should increase. So this is a key short-term goal to focus on.

One of the general metrics for monitoring for case processing productivity is the percent of “open” invention disclosure cases — that is, disclosures received by the TTO that have not yet been triaged. This is a number you want to minimize. Conversely, you could monitor the percent of “triaged” invention disclosures — that is, those received for which triage is complete. This is a number you want to maximize.

Another angle to take on productivity is to look at the percent of triaged invention disclosures that are being patented and marketed as planned.  For example, if you decided an invention had enough potential to pursue, is the appropriate IP protection being put in place? If you decided to actively market an invention or portfolio, is active marketing going on yet? Or for a technology selected for passive marketing, is it posted on your website and other channels yet?

Remember: It takes new TTOs time to establish policies and procedures, train staff, etc. So in the near term, these metrics provide a baseline, with changes signaling the growing maturity of the office.  In the long-run, they can be used to monitor for signs that additional resources (staff or funding) are needed, or that additional standard operating procedures need to be developed. And as always, you may need additional or slightly different metrics to match your TTO’s situation/needs. (Fuentek can help.)

Becky’s Metrics for New/Like-New TTOs:

• Invention Disclosure Pipeline
• Productivity in Processing Cases 
• The Marketing and Licensing Pipeline

In my last blog post, I introduced three areas where brand new — or newly reorganized — technology transfer offices (TTOs) should focus their metrics monitoring efforts: (1) the invention disclosure pipeline, (2) processing cases, and (3) the marketing/licensing pipeline. Today I’m going to elaborate on the first of those three.

When it comes to invention disclosures, a TTO’s overarching goal is to ensure that any and all commercially viable inventions discovered within the R&D labs are disclosed to the TTO. In order to successfully achieve that long-term goal, the TTO must ensure that researchers:

• Recognize their obligations relating to intellectual property (IP)
• Are aware of the existence of your office and how to work with you
• Understand (in general) the process and benefits of commercialization

To achieve these three sub-goals, new TTOs especially must do a lot of outreach and education within their institution. Therefore, the TTO should track the number of outreach interactions per year to ensure the office is putting forth an appropriate amount of effort in this area. The interactions might be:

• Events, including how many people attended – Attendees might actually be participants as well, as with the internal technology showcase Danielle wrote about last year.
• Training sessions and/or presentations at department meetings – We have lots of posts about this.
• Articles in internal newsletters or other publications – Check out our “Periodic Communications” samples.
• Social media tools – Although you don’t want to get carried away too quickly, social media can be a valuable tool for connecting with innovators, as this survey showed.

To understand the effects of the efforts being made to create interactions, it’s also crucial to track measures of the number of invention disclosures received.  Better still if this can be broken down by department.

Normalizing the metrics to fluctuating items, such as number of research faculty and/or research expenditures, allows for effective analysis of your results over time as well as apples-to-apples comparison to other institutions. In the early years, try to establish baselines for the metrics and then monitor them over time to gauge the growth of the TTO. Don’t be surprised if the metrics level off as your TTO becomes more mature. Yet, this leveling off doesn’t mean you stop monitoring; an unexplained change may signal a problem.

One caveat in conclusion: The metrics I provide here are merely suggestions. In reality, the metrics your TTO uses should be tailored to fit your individual office’s situation and needs. This is something Fuentek can help you with.

Becky’s Metrics for New/Like-New TTOs: