Title: Technology transfer
Description: Since World War II, we have witnessed the prosperity of federal and university research laboratories; the emergence of incubators and industry science parks; the boom and bust of venture capital investment in technology startups; the rise and fall of multibillion dollar, cross-continental technology giants; and an increasing number of high-tech products and services. Technology companies view "innovation" as their life blood, spending a significant portion of annual revenue to strengthen their innovation capabilities. Magically, we see startups with far less resources cut into a niche market and eventually evolved to displace incumbents and their reigning technologies. Why and how is this possible? How do scientists and engineers develop new technology in the laboratory and transfer them into our daily lives? The purpose of my doctoral study is to learn how scientific work have led to technological innovation in different business scenarios, how new businesses are created by scientists and engineers, and to explore the challenges of transferring technology from the lab to the marketplace. The case method was used to investigate activities related to innovation, from the development of a new technology, to the creation of commercial products and services.

My thesis combines some technical laboratory research with a study of technology transfer. The first chapter includes a review of literature on innovation and technology transfer, and illustrates why technology transfer is a natural mission of research laboratories. The second chapter summarizes my three years of technical work in a biophysics laboratory, developing a new technique to facilitate studying protein motors. This challenging research project provides a true taste of engineering work inside the laboratory. The third chapter explains how a world class chemical company transferred a technology to strengthen its position in the nonionic surfactant market. It gives a good example of innovation management inside large corporations. In the fourth chapter, A Harvard spinout was investigated to understand the advantages and challenges to commercialize good technology through start-up ventures.