Time Saving Tactics for Technology Transfer Professionals: Achieve Success While Doing More with Less

Time Saving Tactics for Technology Transfer Professionals: Achieve Success While Doing More with Less
Originally presented June, 2009

If there’s one thing in short supply among tech transfer professionals, it’s TIME. It’s a fact of life in virtually every TTO — more work than minutes in the day to accomplish what you’d like to, too many balls in the air, too few resources, and too few days when you actually feel as though you spent your hours adding value and completing meaningful work.

If your TTO is like most, rather than seeking deals and partnerships, you’re spending too much of your time dealing with last minute disclosures, filing provisionals, processing MTAs, responding to researcher complaints and queries, and other minutiae that must get done, but which leaves precious little time for your REAL JOB. And with recent budget cuts experienced by many offices, it’s only gotten worse.

To help you overcome this all-too-common challenge, Technology Transfer Tactics’ Distance Learning Division has secured two industry experts — Jeff Fearn, PhD from the Cornell Center for Technology Enterprise and Commercialization (CCTEC) and David McFeeters-Krone of Intellectual Assets Corporation — to help you clear a path toward a more effective, efficient TTO by making better use of your limited time and gaining more hours to devote to revenue-generating activity.

In addition to valuable nuggets of wisdom and time-saving tips, we’ll focus in on 3 key areas that every TTO - big or small - can make more efficient, and as a result spend more time on deal-making:

Researcher Relations and Outreach
Disclosure Triage and Patent Prosecution
Licensee Management and Royalty Tracking

Our expert faculty will provide real-world, practical advice and valuable time management and efficiency guidance for busy TTO managers and staff:

Don’t sweat the small stuff: Keep disclosures moving swiftly while maintaining control
How to get the most out of your triage process
Establishing incentives and rewards for quality AND workflow
MTA processing and docketing: tools and strategies for cutting time spent in half
Ideas for restructuring staff roles and gaining efficiency
Establishing and enforcing efficiency standards
Gauging your office’s performance: efficiency and workflow benchmarking
Prioritizing high-value work, and high-potential inventions
And much, much more

Jeff Fearn, PhD, manages a diverse portfolio of life sciences, nanotechnology and engineering technologies at the Cornell Center for Technology Enterprise and Commercialization. Jeff spent five years at Fisher Scientific, where he was a Life Sciences Product Manager overseeing a portfolio of over fifteen well known Life Science vendor partners. He was responsible for the profitability, marketing and sales of these products through Fisher. Previously he spent almost ten years at Upstate Biotechnology in various capacities of New Product Development, Quality Assurance and Product Marketing.

David McFeeters-Krone is a technology and licensing consultant working out of the Portland, Oregon area. He has a strong background in licensing, gained through 10 years of experience with industry, government, and academic institutions. Prior to forming his firm, Intellectual Assets, he worked in licensing, technology commercialization, and marketing for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the NASA Mid-Atlantic Technology Applications Center, and Intel Corporation, respectively. In addition, he has provided intellectual property and licensing consulting for the National Technology Transfer Center, Oregon Health & Science University, and many private corporations.

Who Should Listen
Technology transfer managers and professionals, administrators and deans, research commercialization directors, licensing specialists, start-up managers, researchers and entrepreneurs, university research VPs, IP consultants, and other research commercialization professionals wishing to gain efficiency in an increasing time-pressured environment.