Strategies for Tech Transfer and Developmen t, Cay Villars, President, Market Value Concepts. Research Institutions that are willing to foster a feeling of trust in their industrial partners will reap huge benefits in funding for research and licensing agreements for their organization. According to Duke Leahey, former president of AUTM, even a small program can bring in millions of dollars of research funding.
Corporations are concerned about the risks and costs of taking on a new technology.
Wherever possible, academic institutions should develop an environment that supports collaboration and reduces the perception of risk by their corporate partners. Unfortunately, there are many universities across the US that continue to discourage such collaborations by penalizing professors for industrial collaborations during their tenure reviews. Companies require a sense of certainty up front as to who will own the technology that is being developed. If patents are to be owned by the University, companies will want to know whether they will have right of first refusal and what the potential licensing costs will be. Companies receive hundreds or thousands of new technology ideas every month and waste hundreds of hours sorting through technologies that do not fit with their corporate objectives.