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Gena Swewart, President of Sage Technology
Dr. Michael Batalia, Director, Office of Technology Asset Management, Wake Forest University Health Sciences
Mr. Mark Crowell, Associate Vice Chancellor of Economic Development, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill
Q1: Question of culture change: The traditional reward structure is academically focussed on beingpublished. How do we adjust to the culture of corpoate dollars andprivate funding?
MC: I am in an interesting position to address that having worked at 3 different universities. At Duke, we worked closely with the private sector. At NC State, part of being a land grant university, we were rewarded for developments in the state as a whole. At UNC, the oldest university that also considers itself a public ivy league university, and the chancellor and provost are very involved in departmental activities. Our school of pharmacy has just patented commercialization and licensing. Partnering with the Kauffman Foundation, we didn't house the program in the business school. Instead, we housed the Institute in the College of Arts and Sciences.
MB: What's old is new. Gallileo is one of the best known scientists of all time being involved in the development, patenting, and commercialization of technology.
MC: We just received on of the six nano-cancer grants from NIH.
Q2: I have worked for a few startup companies in Utah. The current climate is a little different in that the people that manage the state efforts manage busniess people. How do you manage entrepreneurship out of academia?
MB: At Wake Forest we are partnering champions of an industry with research and development teams within the university. At the beginning states, we don't necessarily know if it will be produced in the public sector. Setting milestones and achieiving small goals. At the end of the day, we are trying to capture value of what is happening within the university. We don't patent the technology first. We evaluate the team and the project management process
GS: You have to understand the ego that sometimes happens in academia.
Q3: When and how do you decide to transfer the technology and begin working with the business world?
MB: Try to cover your expenses. Aim for a zero-sum game. As a minimum, you should be able to cover your expenses. There are institutions where scientists took the lead and it becomes a science project. We want to have prototypes, intellectual property, and a valuable package to take to market. At every milestone, is this something we take onto the next milestone?
MC: When we look at our technology portfolio, we look at a few broad objectives. 1) Just to get it out through publishing or open source 2) Creating revenue and starting new businesses 3) Engage with the venture community. I think its important that we don't try to push all the technology out on the venture community. We want them to be through the project pipeline so they are succesful. The University has other tools to launch to market that are not business models. Our business development focus is still the priority.
Q4: Are there consultants involved in the technology transfer process?
MB: One of the challenges is finding the right industry experience, credible domain background, and overall knowledge of the sector. We've been fortunate so far to find the right people to lead the companies in these areas. The triangle and other regions have a bit of an easier time finding consultants in each target sector.
MC: Once we have a piece of IP, we are starting to think about the alignment of the technology with the needs of the region in general. We are getting extremely strategic and looking at both ends of the cycle. Some would say we need to align our curriculum with these industry sectors. We need to find the sweet spot in between.
Q5: (National Science Foundation) What does your office think about the education of individual students who will be employees of these start-ups?
MB: We have an entrepreneurship institute to develop interested and skilled students. We have launched an internship program in our office for 3-6 month activities. Our job is to better prepare them. They have this great dream to be an entrepreneur, but they don't necessarily know much about IP or contracts.
MC: UNC Tomorrow is an initiative of the UNC System. The system president went to Chambers of Commerce, schools, and business around the state to report on the needs. http://www.northcarolina.edu
Q6: (Agricultural Transfer) We are teaching partner first. Who in your universe or industry sector needs help? So when you go out to find IP, you already have a strong partner to launch the business.
MC: I think you will find more universities do that.
Q6: Joe from Wichita Kansas (South-Central Kansas). Our Bioscience industry is at $200M and will soon hit $500M. Universities will work together, but are they going to be willing to give up the funding to other universities. How do you try to
MC: That's a great question and challenge. "The reason academic politics are so boring is because the stakes are so low." In the Research Triangle, I think the ability to. The percentage of collaboration grants between UNC and NC State is close to half of the research budget. We do not have an engineering program, and they do not have a medical school. We launched a degree program on biomedical engineering that will give students a dual-degree from both schools. That is almost unheard of.
Q7: When is it that we should interject as a regional development group or the Department of Labor? When an industry is leaving, we try to do something. If an industry comes, then we try to take credit. At what point do we step in?
MB: Giving the faculty the capacity to engage the company who is coming to the area.
Q8: Jerry Collins (North Alabama and South Central Tennessee)- What is your philosophy on how to treat deals?
GS: Signing a license is not the end of the partnership. Universities are not trying to squeeze every nickel out of the deal. It is important to give the technology commercial legs, and the revenue is secondary?
MC: Out of our five objectives, revenue is not one of them. There are other long-term reasons. We expressly empower people to leave dollars on the table.
MB: Value is subjective. In a lasic study, they found that most people would pay more for a good surgery. Why? Because it's your health and your eyes. It doesn't really matter on the particulars of the deal on day one. Are you willing to hash it out with your partners down the road.
Q9: Matt (Rochester, NY) We are a town of Eastman Kodak. There is speculation that some of their technology that may not be on the shelf, but we could benefit from it for research of new technology? Have you had success in the area of receivng patents from companies?
GS: I had a job working with NC State looking for patent donations. We received four patent donations and those all did not return to market. IP Donations are not really taking place anymore. In the patent process, we can look at those applications and discover what companies might be working on.
MC: Patent donations are not a good idea. My advice would be to look at the entrepreneurial ecosystem and find out was to have companies like Eastman Kodak to be incentivized to talk to investors and pursue those other patents.
Q10: (Central New Jersey WIRED) : I was doing basic research for many years. I made a little correction and came upon of something that might be of interest to the commercial community. How do work with professors that have access to these technologies carry forward to the next step?
MC: If you were at UNC, then we would find out how important you are as the part of the team. We have some faculty who think they are the next Bill Gates. The scientists or researchers must be invested to make the technology transfer.
MB: I agree with what Mark said. There are lots of ways to move technology out and there are lots of roles to play. It's more labor intensive that the scientist may realize, but they must be involved.
Q10: (Clifton from Suffolk Community College): We form relationships with startup companies to work on non-patented technologies to work on their contracted projects. Do you have rules set in place for that type contractual relationships?
MB: We work with some serial entrepreneurs that we trust
GS: At the seed stage, the student has the right to be involved at the intellectual property level.
