Universities that have been successful in obtaining American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) grants agree that these funds were not won by accident; it took a good deal of planning — and a good deal of marketing, both internal and external. “We have an energetic and proactive faculty,” says Christopher D. McKinney, director, Office of Technology Transfer and Enterprise Development, and Adjunct Professor of Engineering Management at Vanderbilt University. The school’s researchers have received 180 ARRA grants totaling more than $74 million in first-year funding. “When they saw the news there would be stimulus money, they asked one question: ‘Where can I get some?’ And then they were off chasing this stuff,” he reports.

For one of those faculty members, Sandra J. Rosenthal, filling out a successful grant proposal is more art than science — and it is most definitely a marketing exercise. The chemistry professor leads an interdisciplinary team that has received $387,000 in funding from NIH to develop a new generation of fluorescent nanocrystal tags and find ways to attach them to the cell machinery that manipulates neurotransmitters. “It is a bit of a marketing job for the scientist and for the science,” she asserts. “If you can’t sell it in your project summary — if they’re not sold on the proposal in that space — it doesn’t matter what you do in the next 15 pages.” Rosenthal cautions, however, that “you have to market it scientifically; you can’t just say this is the greatest thing since sliced bread.” For the National Science Foundation, for example, “you need science that is intellectually interesting, and you need to explain why. Then, you need a broader impact statement so the reviewer see will see the science will have that broader impact.” A detailed article on successful grant marketing appears in the January 2010 issue of Intellectual Property Marketing Advisor. To get access to this complete article and become a subscriber, including access to the entire archive of back issues, CLICK HERE.

Posted January 5th, 2010 under Intellectual Property Marketing

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