Richard Magid, PhD, vice president of the University of Tennessee Research Foundation at the Health Science Center office in Memphis, determined early on that his first boot camp was not going to suffer from ‘rookie mistakes.’ “This was the first time we were going to host an event like this here at the Health Science Center,” he says, referring to “Invention to Venture Memphis,” held earlier this year. “It was clear that working with a group that had experience in doing this would help us avoid potential missteps and simplify the process of getting things in order.”

“From a marketing perspective, working with an outside group with a focus on entrepreneurship also lent credibility to the whole topic on campus,” adds Joy Fisher, director of marketing & business development for the UT Research Foundation, which handles tech transfer for the university. For all these reasons UT decided to partner with the National Collegiate Inventors and Innovators Alliance (NCIIA), an alliance of faculty and students based in Hadley, MA, that supports technology innovation and entrepreneurship in universities and colleges.

Fisher says that NCIIA provided a number of pre-packaged marketing materials “That allowed us to market more effectively and with less effort than if we had done it from scratch,” she says. For example, UT was able to select from a group of fliers and posters. “They were high attention getters, with high impact graphics we could customize for what we needed to do,” Fisher says. “They printed and sent them, and all we had to do was post them.” In addition, NCIIA created a website that allowed UT to register and track attendees “without us having to create that wheel.” It also provided “pre-canned” e-mail messages. “Again, we customized them to what we needed but it still saved time,” says Fisher. What’s more, UT was able to create an additional set of e-mails which NCIIA allowed them to send to its list of prospective attendees. “We know that several people attended because they were on NCIIA’s contact list — especially people from out of state,” says Magid. A detailed article on the UTRF’s outsourcing approach appears in the May 2010 issue of Intellectual Property Marketing Advisor. For subscription information, CLICK HERE.

Posted May 25th, 2010 under Intellectual Property Marketing

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