Notes from the Field

Faley and Sharer have organized a variety of technology transfer functions around the concept of Intellectual Asset Management, which proposes organization-level strategic management of knowledge-based assets including investing, packaging, and transferring them to maximize benefit. At Michigan Tech, this conceptualization applies provided that researchers and their staffs, students, and facilities are considered to be integral parts of the assets to be managed. This does not mean that these additional asset components are treated as property to buy and sell, but rather they are integral to the other knowledge assets—patents, licenses, know-how—and their commercial utility. Moreover, research personnel and facilities involvement frequently extends into Step 6 of the authors' Knowledge Dissemination Process (see Faley & Sharer, this volume, Table 1) and such extension is often necessary to successful licensing and product commercialization.

Faley and Sharer suggest that intellectual asset management can be optimized in part by identifying a prime objective for the institution's technology transfer function. The concept of a single prime objective is difficult to correlate broadly to our experience because the technological and maturity diversity of intellectual assets correlate to widely variable approaches to asset development. Thus, we set objectives and development plans based on the characteristics of specific research areas and assets. In assessing invention disclosures, for example, our approach is to characterize the business case for making an investment in the subject matter of the disclosure. Given that we never see disclosures that describe market-ready inventions and that discloser continuing involvement is usually necessary for successful commercialization, our asset-specific objectives and development plans necessarily build in part from an understanding of the interests of the discloser(s). We consider such things as whether a discloser considers involvement with a potential licensee to be an enhancement to, or distraction from, the discloser's career objectives, academic or otherwise. This varies widely and its understanding is necessary to be cost effective in making patenting and marketing investments. Understanding the relationships between players within our research enterprise, and their inventions and collaborators on a case-by-case basis, best facilitates the development of transfer mechanisms, for example, licenses that optimize the management of the knowledge asset to produce revenue and more importantly, more knowledge. This integrated management is fundamental to our approach to licensing.

We extend our objective of characterizing the business case for making a next investment to the commmercializer, namely, the licensee. Licensees frequently become integral to our knowledge asset by providing funding for consulting and research, product test beds for application of our inventions, and in some cases, royalties. When treated as technology codevelopers, licensees can become excellent partners who facilitate the continuing growth of our knowledge assets, broadly defined.

As evidence of the effectiveness of this integrated approach, Michigan Tech produces invention disclosures and licenses at 1.5 and 3 times the national rates, respectively (normalized to annual research expenditures). This model of integrated research and technology transfer enterprise development also is being extended currently to a coalition of four universities under the newly formed University Technology and Expertise Assets Management for Enterprise Development (U-TEAMED) program sponsored by the respective institutions and the Michigan Economic Development Corporation.