Keith Strassner, director of the Office of Technology and Economic Development at the Missouri University of Science and Technology (MST) in Rolla, MO, has seen too many promising innovations come to nothing because inventors don’t have the resources to develop their ideas to a marketable point. Even if potential licensees or investors show an interest in the IP, they inevitably ask for additional data or a prototype. And that’s where the roadblock commonly referred to as the Valley of Death begins. “There is really not much funding out there for researchers to take something beyond the basic stage before you get to the big money — the angel money and other sorts of funding to really start a company,” says Strassner. “We looked at this need from the marketplace, and thought we have to figure out a way over this.”

The solution that Strassner and his colleagues at MST came up with is the Technology Acceleration Program or TAP, a process whereby the university is earmarking a portion of its earnings from patents into proof-of-concept funding, designed to get some of the most promising IP further developed. “We decided that it was a good use of the funds to put them back into researchers’ hands and let them do a little bit more work to make their inventions more attractive to the market,” says Strassner.

In its first year, MST is targeting about 22% of the school’s licensing income to fund the TAP effort, but researchers have to apply for the funds just as they would seek other types of grant funding, says Strassner. “We set up some very basic criteria so that in order to be eligible for the grants, you [must] have disclosed the technology to the technology transfer office, and the TTO has to have proceeded with a patent filing so that the only projects we are investing in are projects we have already [decided] are valuable,” he explains. “We aren’t going to invest [the royalty dollars] in basic research. It has to be building on something.” A detailed article on the TAP initiative appears in the August issue of Technology Transfer Tactics. To subscribe and access the full article, plus three years of archived best practices, CLICK HERE.

Posted September 1st, 2010 under Tech Transfer

Write a comment