What do Stanford, Univ. Alabama, Arizona State, and Univ. Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have in common? They’re all in non-metropolitan areas. And that’s the focus of the conference I presented at this week. Hosted by UIDP and the University of Arkansas, this university-industry engagement workshop brought together a diverse collection of higher education institutions from outside major metropolitan areas. These universities face common as well as unique challenges.

Every university technology licensing officer dreads that moment when a company has expressed interest in a piece of intellectual property (IP)… but doesn’t want to sign a license. Fuentek has found that industry-sponsored research can be a useful tool to get things “unstuck” in these situations. We moderated a session at the AUTM annual meeting that provided insights on this approach from two universities and a pharmaceutical company.

Want to pack a room? Talk about gap funding at the Eastern Region Meeting (ERM) of the Association of University Technology Managers (AUTM)/

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.

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. And because many of them are keen to partner with industry, they have been simplifying their policies and offering new programs to facilitate collaboration. Today’s blog post summarizes one such university program, and we provide specific advice for entering into discussions with potential collaborators… and knowing when it’s time to move on.

In her recent Wall Street Journal article “Universities Push Harder Into Realm of Startups,” reporter Ruth Simon observed that “universities are stepping up efforts to create ‘spinouts,’ or business startups born from some of the cutting-edge research of their students or faculty. Some schools are creating funds that help cover startup costs.” She mentions several schools’ efforts to support their spinout/startup companies, including the University of Minnesota’s Discovery Capital Investment Program, the University of Wisconsin’s Ideadvance Seed Fund, and the University of California’s independent UC Ventures. Yet another funding trend is occurring that focuses on an earlier segment of the commercialization pipeline, seeking to address what Simon rightly observed as an obstacle to university spinouts: “Technologies emerging from research labs are often embryonic.” This trend, known as translational funding, is more and more in the news.

Last week I was invited to participate on a panel at the 2014 AUTM® national meeting. The focus: How university technology transfer offices (TTOs) are shifting their view of intellectual property (IP) terms when securing R&D funding through sponsored research agreements (SRAs). My fellow panelists and I discussed the current models at various universities. Here’s an overview.

Over the past several years, I have noticed an emerging trend in university-industry partnerships, and it has begun to create new challenges for technology transfer professionals. Companies are beginning to forge ever more complex collaborations with universities and university consortia while relying less often on the more standard agreements, such as sponsored research agreements (SRAs) and material transfer agreements (MTAs). These collaborations may….

This past spring, I had the pleasure of serving as a panelist at the Lab-to-Market Inter-Agency Summit convened by the White House Office of Science & Technology Policy (OSTP). This past week, the panelists’ recommendations were released (download the report), and they’re getting some well-deserved attention. And they deserve some elaboration. As summit co-chairs Joe Allen and Diane Palmintera wrote in an article published on Innovation Daily, the summit had an unusual format, with…

This Friday, April 19th, at 1pm EDT I will be a panelist in a webinar called “Open Innovation Best Practices for University Tech Transfer.” Sponsored by Technology Transfer Tactics, this 1-hour webinar is designed to help universities be successful in open innovation partnerships. A paradigm shift toward open innovation is underway among universities. This shift has been coming for a while, as R&D budgets have been cut year after year. Universities had to employ concepts like open innovation in order to streamline processes.