By Gary Lundquist

The annual meeting of the Technology Transfer Society is a snapshot of the state of the art in tech transfer. Given this year’s focus on the future, I listened and networked to find the keys to successful technology transfer as we enter the new millennium.

This is not a rigorous survey; it does not represent a consensus. These are simply the themes that this author found at this conference.

1. Ambient Change

Everything about and around tech transfer changes all the time.

Our keynoter, Winfred Phillips, VP of Research at the University of Florida truly set the tone. A few quotes:

• Declining cost of computing power (30%/yr) has easily as big an impact as the gasoline engine in terms of reducing the "size" of the world.
• Doubling of information supply each year changes business and competitive strategies
• 95% of all the people who ever lived are alive today and have needs met by new technologies.

Technology drives change, so ideas are capital. The winning economies will be those who best develop and nurture their sources of technologies.

The winning corporations will be those who best develop and/or acquire technologies, then integrate them into products.

Jim Wilhelm of the MCTTC spoke on the changes faced by small defense contractors. Declining defense spending (change) leads to prime contractors buying up subcontractors to move more government business in-house (change) which means small contractors have fewer customers (change), forcing them to change focus from government to commercial markets (change).

That, in turn, requires revision of their business model (change) and development of new skills and business processes (change).

Dan Brand, current chair of the Federal Lab Consortium spoke about government behaving like an enterprise and assured us all that the concept wasn’t an oxymoron, at least in the domain of tech transfer. Now that is truly a change.

Dan summed up the change concept with a quote from Darwin: "It isn’t the strongest species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the ones most responsive to change."

2. Globalization

Technology is a global phenomenon, and so is tech transfer. In particular, attracting licensees and other adopters means considering needs and market size on a global basis.

At another level, the skills of tech transfer are very much in demand worldwide. The British want to leverage US experience in government-to-industry technology transfer. The European Community needs to learn how overcome cultural barriers to speed products to market.

3. A Strategic Focus

Technology transfer seems to be everywhere. Why? Because it is a method, or strategy, to solve problems and create opportunities.

Make money: Keith Ellis of Proctor and Gamble advised on approaching a large company with a technology. Commercial rewards and risks will always drive the deal.

Reduce costs: Robert Elves of Concurrent Technology spoke on the potential of tech transfer to lower the costs of national defense. Gale Allen of NASA explained how tech transfer reduces industry development costs.

Create businesses: Richard Fox detailed the process used by the Central Florida Innovation Corp. to spin technologies out of military contractors to create new companies.

Sustain new businesses: Several speakers talked about incubators. In some cases, new companies form around transferred technology, but the real key here is transfer of business technology.

Speed product development: John Thompson of Lucent and Gary Lundquist of Market Engineering suggested that product development is technology transfer. To manage development quality, manage the transfers along the value chain.

Create economies: Sharon Yun of the Department of Commerce noted that the speed of dissemination of new technologies has supported rapid economic development of many countries.

4. Demand-Driven Methods

Tech transfer specialists have, for years, argued the merits of push methods vs pull methods. In push, a technology is marketed to the organizations deemed most likely to acquire it. A very targeted approach.

In pull, the capabilities to create new technologies are marketed to an entire industry to create demand that automatically pulls technologies out of labs. A broader approach.

This meeting saw three papers on a variation of push and pull: demand-driven technology transfer.

Robert Saba, John Bacon, and Lani Hummel of NASA’s MTAC presented a pair of papers in which an intermediary is created to clarify demand and orchestrate transfer to meet demand. Their model has five steps:

Target markets: MTAC has thus far demonstrated their process on the specific market of firefighters and the cross-industry market for sensors.

Customer needs: The Pittsburgh Bureau of Fire worked with MTAC to identify needs of firefighters. MTAC converted needs (say, tracking of firefighters within burning structures) into technology needs (for specialized communications devices).

Commercial potential: A task force of firefighters and technology sources worked to address market size.

Technologies: A search of available technologies was done to discover the core of possible commercial products.

Vendors: Finally, commercial partners were sought to "adopt" the technologies, develop products, and serve fire fighting needs. Vendors responded eagerly because demand had already been established and core technologies found.

Gary Horsham of NASA Glenn took a less direct approach. Market research methods were used to identify needs of target markets, and company supplied information then enabled a matchmaking process.

Thompson & Lundquist advocated tight source-adopter cooperation in product development processes to meet demands of end customers.

By whatever mechanism, demand-driven technology transfer is a key to the future.

5. Expertise/Intermediaries

Demand-driven models use intermediaries. Neither source nor adopter are likely to initiate a fully demand-driven approach.

Intermediaries are common throughout tech transfer: ORTAs in federal labs, tech transfer offices in universities, Regional and National Tech Transfer Centers funded by NASA, and local and regional economic development groups.

Alliances form across channels. Carr et al presented a University-Industry Collaborative Center. Cindi Schmitt of SPARTA talked about synergism of multiple federal labs. Elliot Levine of the DOE offered a framework for government-industry partnerships. Riccardo Carelli presented a European network supporting small company innovations.

Saba et al founded the Fire Fighting Task Force and the Next Generation Sensors Initiative across industry, government, academia, and end users. Three authors discussed the potential for web sites to serve as intermediaries.

Fox and the incubator authors clarified the need for support mechanisms for emerging companies commercializing new technologies. Fox presented a model in which both a nonprofit state organization and a for profit company support the development of new businesses.

Each intermediary, in turn, needs expertise. People with strong business experience and skills seem to create the most effective models. Technology transfer is a business proposition, not a technical one.

Each intermediary also needs a measure of aggressiveness. Forming a consortium or convincing two federal labs to collaborate takes energy and dedication.

Finally, intermediaries almost always need special funding. Those seen at this conference were funded by various government bodies and clearly deliver a positive return on investment.

6. Marketing

Aggressive intermediaries are excellent marketers. The notions that good technology will sell itself are fading fast.

Bruce Gretz of Alpha Consulting stressed the importance of market assessment to define the business opportunity. Keith Ellis confirmed this from the large company perspective.

Lindsey Weston of CERAM Research took an innovative look at justifying new technology within companies. Important advances may be delayed by management styles. Overcoming that kind of barrier requires customized internal marketing.

A few years ago, marketing was a dirty word in federal labs and universities. A panel on the lab missions made it clear that marketing is part of everyone’s job. Dan Brand claims that even government labs can now behave much like businesses.

The Future of Tech Transfer

Let’s integrate these concepts from the bottom up. Tech transfer in the next millennium will require:

• Business skills, esp. in marketing
• Aggressive people and active intermediary organizations
• Demand-driven methods
• A strategic focus
• Global perspectives
• Change-management skills & tools

Technologies change, adopters change, opportunities come and go. Being in the technology business means dealing with change.

The first five competencies are actually ways to initiate change with technology, then manage change processes to assure that three sets of needs are met: Those of the source, the adopter, and the funding agency of the intermediary.

The result is wins for everyone.

Participants in this year’s T2S meeting had a great opportunity to learn and to share. We encourage you to consider submitting a paper and attending next year’s meeting.