The article below appeared in the November 2007 issue of Technology Transfer Tactics.

Both the University of Central Florida and Pennsylvania State University have adopted the commercialization assessment methodology developed by former technology industry executive and entrepreneur Wendy Kennedy. Her book, So what? Who cares? Why you? serves as a workbook for faculty members and other potential inventors to determine whether their technology is worth the time and effort to commercialize.

Using information campus innovators reveal in the workbook helps technology transfer offices weed through inventions more efficiently. It also provides marketing perspective that will help commercialize the most promising ideas, tech transfer officials with UCF and Penn State say.

Handing faculty members a workbook to fill out when they inquire about commercialization forces them to think through the potential market for their invention, which can relieve some of the burdens on the tech transfer office, says Joseph Giampapa, associate director of UCF’s TTO.

“You can assess the odds of patentability a lot easier than you can assess the odds of commercial success,” says Giampapa. Commercialization assessment is not always consistent, and often is an informal process that leaves too much room for subjectivity and dissatisfaction among researchers whose ideas don’t make the cut, he notes.

“Turning down ideas is not easy,” Giampapa says. “Hopefully with this methodology we will have a way to make inventors our partner, so when we have to say ‘no,’ they will buy into it. It keeps people focused on the analysis.” He says that he’s had positive feedback from his university’s licensing associates on the workbook method. “We can rely on those worksheets rather than invent our own [evaluation] method,” he says.

Giampapa, Kennedy and Daniel Leri, director of the research commercialization office at Penn State, described their experiences with the book at the recent AUTM Eastern Regional Meeting in Washington, DC.

Tech transfer staff ‘outnumbered’

Penn State employs four professional technology license officers, plus one director and five support staff, Leri says. These employees work with around 5,400 faculty members, and “it doesn’t take a mathematician to figure out you’re outnumbered,” he says. “Our number one issue is trying to help faculty members self-educate on the issue of commercialization” without offending them.

The university launched its commercialization assessment program last October, Leri says. Now, “when a faculty member comes in [with a potential invention], we give them the book,” which includes worksheets and various exercises for the inventor to work through. This has helped weed out some of those who are less serious while keeping the faculty happy, he says. “Out of 10 people, seven you never hear from again, but they feel serviced at a very high level,” he says. “Three out of 10 will send [the workbook] back, and those are the three you really want.”

With the book having prompted researchers to think through many of the issues involved in commercialization, discussions between the TTO and faculty can “start at a much higher level,” Leri says.

Some faculty members might attempt to skip the workbook, and others might complain, but “you’ll always have some who are going to do that. The question is, how quickly and professionally can you evaluate their true interest?” says Leri. When the workbook was first introduced, he says, the TTO would get calls from the university president’s office after a faculty member complained about the process. While those complaints remain “a very real issue, we get less calls now,” Leri reports.

Penn State anticipates using about 1,500 books in the first year of the project, he adds. The university purchased that quantity in bulk from Kennedy, and has co-branded the books as its own “commercialization toolkit,” Kennedy tells Technology Transfer Tactics. The bulk order was funded by five local state-level economic development agencies, she adds. UCF purchased 200 copies without the co-branding for use in its venture lab, the TTO, and in a post-graduate course.

Individual copies of the book cost $59.95, but the price drops with a bulk order, though Kennedy declined to name an exact price, noting that it will vary based on quantity and whether other services she provides, such as workshops and a presentation to kick-off the program, are included.

Workbook no substitute for one-on-one

Giampapa notes that the workbook is just one tool for a tech transfer office, not a replacement for interaction with the faculty. “This does not displace the idea that a good ‘bedside manner’ is important for your faculty,” he says. “If you get a good reputation with them, then they tend to come back even if you tell them no this time, because they are serial inventors.”

The workbook helps to engage the inventors, says Kennedy. “No one knows better than the inventor what the invention is and why they created this thing. We can’t keep beating our heads against the wall to figure out where these new and novel ideas belong.”

The book asks inventors to consider a series of questions centered around its three main themes:

• So What? asks the inventor about the idea, the business problem, and where the idea fits into that business problem.

• Who Cares? asks who the customer is, what’s the path to market, and where revenues will come from.

• Why You? attempts to determine the inventor’s competitive edge, whether the right team is in place to market the invention, and the story behind the invention.

The book intentionally does not get into the technical aspects of various inventions, Kennedy says, adding, “it’s all about the value proposition. We have to get inventors to take some ownership. We have to get them to take some accountability — not just because the workload is so great in tech transfer offices, but because they came up with the idea. That’s the way we start to change their attitude.”

Once researchers have worked through all the questions, they are far better prepared to speak to a tech transfer official about commercialization, Kennedy says. “For the majority, this is a radically different way to think. It’s counterintuitive a lot of times. But they want to have this dialogue, and you need to engage them. The goal for me in this exercise was to take some of the workload off the people assessing the ideas and put it on the people who have the ideas.”

Leri agrees. “We’re not trying to turn people away, but we have to sort through the concepts they’re presenting,” he says.

Contact Giampapa at 407-882-1117 or giampapa@mail.ucf.edu; Leri at 814-865-6301 or danleri@psu.edu; and Kennedy at 613-851-6621 or wendy@wendykennedy.com.

Editor’s note: Information on the workbook, including details on co-branding options, is available at www.wendykennedy.com. Purchasers also receive access to an online resource center with downloadable templates, primers, and additional assessment materials. Readers can view an introduction, a sample chapter, and a sample area of the resource center at http://www.wendykennedy.com/book_inside_toc.html.