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A Message from Carlos Gutierrez Building Innovation-Driven Regional Economies in Small and Mid-Sized Metro Centers Creating Systems for Entrepreneur Support Innovation and Entrepreneurship in Rural America Kentucky’s Rural Innovation and Entrepreneurship Program: An In-Depth Look at How It Works  The Importance of Networks and Capacity Building in Technology Transfer and Commercialization
Best Practices in University Technology Transfer
A 21st Century Model for Engineering Education
Turning the Corner: Trends in Angel Investing Growing Ohio’s High Performance Economy Replanting the Economic Forest in Northeast Ohio Subscribe
About Economic Development America
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Technology Transfer: The Importance of Networks and Capacity Building in Technology Transfer and Commercialization (cont.)Determining how to bring the “know who” parties together and apply the collective “know what” to build the skills of the innovation creators is our challenge. In other words, before we can transfer technology, we must effectively transfer knowledge from “those who know.” An interesting story last week in the New York Times illustrates this point and the fact that “those who know” may be found in somewhat unexpected places. Students from the University of Arizona’s business school competed in a business idea competition called “Fame or Flame.” Two students’ initial idea was considered a “flame,” and they had to go back to the drawing board. To help them, a professor gave them a catalog compiled by the university’s tech transfer office containing dozens of technologies developed in the university’s physics, engineering, and other science schools. The two students quickly identified a portable device developed by two medical school professors that allows you to peer into children’s eyes and photograph the retinas to detect Shaken Baby Syndrome. In short order the two had conducted market research, developed a business plan, and incorporated the company as Optica Inc., complete with a detailed exit strategy. Of course, these students were trained in entrepreneurship. They had the opportunity recognition skills – and the time – that likely many of our tech transfer faculty lack. Similarly, our Kauffman Campuses program is currently funding eight universities, all of which are focused on graduating students with entrepreneurial skills no matter what their discipline. This, we hope, will serve our future generations of faculty well. But it does not help us address the here and now. Today, we must begin creating the social networks that will allow us to leverage knowledge from those who know. Our success in advancing the technology transfer process depends on it. The unintended consequence of Bayh-Dole has been undue pressure placed on a single “office” to solve the commercialization puzzle; the solutions we seek must look beyond. Faculty, university administration, government, and industry must all come together to apply resources – human and financial – and share knowledge in the name of opening the floodgates for innovation. According to New Growth economics, a country’s capacity to take advantage of the knowledge economy depends on how quickly it can become a “learning economy.” In a learning economy, it is believed that individuals, firms, and countries are able to create wealth in proportion to their capacity to learn and share innovation. Part of the learning economy may well be our ability to create the social networks necessary for commercializing university research, learning from each other how to better recognize opportunities, evaluate them, and translate them into products and services that will transform society.
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