“If there are any milestones you’ve hit, or successes you’ve had, make sure we know that,” she said. “And tell us what moment in time your company is in,” added Krinzman, founder and managing director of Venture Architects, which helps companies with business plans and investor presentations. In addition, she said, it’s very important for your plan to answer the following question: “What problem are you solving?” What’s more, she noted, investors — and judges — want to see that you have the team required to execute your plan.

It’s critically important to describe your target customer and marketing strategy, Krinzman continued. “In today’s economy it is all about sales and marketing, so we want to know if you know how to sell and market the product,” she stressed. Throughout the plan, she added, you should be concise - and use bullet points liberally. Do not be afraid to address the competition, she advised. “This is a section a lot of people skip — or they say they have no competition; big mistake,” Krinzman opined. “Everyone has competition in some shape or form, so briefly describe the competitive landscape.”

Whether you are writing a full plan or a shorter version for a competition, Krinzman suggested showing it to friends who don’t know much about your business — and to take note of their questions.

Source: Miami Herald

Also coming soon:

• Patent Prosecution: Best Practices for Reducing Costs While Improving Patent Quality — Next Tuesday, February 9, 2010
• Performing Market Research Studies: Testing the Waters to De-Risk Your IP Investments — Wednesday, February 24, 2010
• Tech Transfer Marketing on a Shoestring: Guerilla Tactics in a Budget-Cut World — Tuesday, March 9, 2010

• Dave Yang, founder, CTO, and VP of Vimicro, was at CES to announce a scene-based, high-fidelity image processing technology for surveillance markets. The quality, he says, is good enough for high accuracy video analytics and to use as criminal evidence due to its image/video process and compression, which preserves the details of the original scene. Microsoft, Samsung, Sony, HP, Logitech, Lenovo, and Philips are some of the companies already counted among Vimicro’s customers.
• Dr. Qiang Gao, inventor, founder, and CEO of IVT Corporation, told of a personal loss that led him to develop IVT’s newest product: the Mobile Health Management and Rescue Service System. Built around vital sign monitoring, the technology is aimed at the elderly and ill, for their caregivers, physicians, and emergency centers. Gao is hoping to develop distributors worldwide.
• Liu Yingjian, chairman of the board of Hanwang Science and Technology, developed the first online handwriting character recognition (OCR) device. The company owns IP in online handwriting cursive recognition, OCR, and digital drawing tablets.
• The IGRS Engineering Lab spokesman and president, Dr. Yuning Sun, said despite the investment in a CES exhibit the company had no specific products to offer at present. Rather, he explained, IGRS’s goal is to develop products that overcome incompatibility between drives, interfaces, and network configurations.
• Dr. Gang Qiu, founder of Patentics, a large-scale concept search engine, described his company’s next generation, intelligent search engine that can translate patents and document content worldwide.
• ShiZhu Li, the moderator from Zhongguancun, acted as interpreter for the panel and the audience as questions were posed both in English and Chinese. He ended the day by saying, “We are proud to be here this year, because we are with world class players, and we brought innovative entrepreneurs. We come as a team from the Science Park in China telling one story. We have this name, ZhongGuanCun, that’s hard to pronounce. You will keep it in your mind.” He concluded, “we’ll be back.”

Source: Bright Side of News

• Marketing Intellectual Property
• Available Technologies
• Technology Commercialization Process
• Technology Transfer Offices
• Licensing and Deal Making
• Symbiotic Innovation
• Virtual Teams
• Competitive Intelligence

Of these, the first two are by far the most frequently addressed topics. “We blog twice a week,” says Laura Schoppe, president of Fuentek. “On Tuesdays we will post things relevant to the industry, such as tech transfer tips and techniques, and on Thursdays we blog on technologies for our clients.”

The reason from promoting clients’ technology is clear, but what is the rationale for addressing issues of the day? “There are a couple of reasons,” says Schoppe. “First, we think it’s important when things happen in the industry that they be responded to in a timely fashion, so we’ll note that ‘X’ happened, and this is why we think it’s a good idea, or why we think it could cause problems for people trying to commercialize their technologies. So, this benefits the industry as a whole — practitioners and clients. We also feel it helps establish us as thought leaders. We’ve been doing this a very long time; we want to share the insights we’ve gained from looking at thousands of technologies, and make people aware that Fuentek does this and is good at it.”

“We wanted to raise awareness in the community of Fuentek as a thought leader, but also [use the blog] as a way to advertize the technologies we are marketing.” echoes Karen Hiser, technology transfer consultant and the Fuentek lead on using the blog for technology marketing. “We have a process and a schedule for doing that. We look to leverage the search engines and have people find these blogs. It expands our reach beyond what we could ever hope to do with trade shows, cold calling, mailings, and so forth.” A detailed article on Fuentek’s blogging strategy appears in the February 2010 issue of Intellectual Property Marketing Advisor. To subscribe and read the full article, plus gain access to the entire archive of strategy-filled back issues, CLICK HERE.

• Register with Google Maps. Google allows local businesses (big or small) a chance to register their business address and phone number in its local listings, Eitan notes. “If, for example, someone searches for a keyword together with a location, e.g. ‘nw11 plumber,’ the search results will include listings from Google Local displayed on a map next to the normal search results,” he explains.
• Upload products to Google Product Search. “To start selling products on Google Products, all you need is to prepare a data feed and a Google user account,” says Eitan. Also known as Google Base, this free service allows businesses to get specific products or services on first-page results. “In most cases these will appear just below the paid results and will include an image, title, price and direct link to the product or service,” he notes.
• Get a voucher for AdWords. Google’s AdWords is by far the biggest paid ads medium. “If you search hard enough you may come across a free voucher, which will charge your account and let you use Adwords at no cost until the funds run out,” says Eitan. “Your bank might offer such a voucher when you open an account or when you attend a Google university course (which are free and managed by Google).”

Other no-cost options, says Eitan, include social marketing and blogging. He says you might also consider the following options, which do cost money but which enable you to “test the waters” for a modest investment:

• Register with niche directories. Most industries have a few directories which will drive qualified web traffic to your site, says Eitan, but be careful “not to register with directories which offer little value or are unrelated to your industry,” which will generate essentially worthless traffic, he advises.
• Start an affiliate program. Affiliate Marketing is an Internet-based marketing practice in which a business rewards another for each sale generated by the affiliate, Eitan explains. “You can either self-manage the program by buying an off the shelf affiliate tracking software or use a type of middleman service to link between you and the affiliate; each has its pros and cons, and each case is different,” he notes.
• E-mail marketing. Newsletters, product updates, and e-mail promotions are fantastic to keep in touch with customers or prospects and easy to manage, says Eitan. “The key is to communicate relevant messages, at the right time and at the right frequency,” he adds, noting that there are a number of web-based e-mail software providers — some such as Mail Chimp that even offer a free plan.
• Improve your search engine ranking. The most cost effective marketing channel with the lowest cost per acquisition is the natural traffic channel also known as SEO, says Eitan. “By optimizing your website in accordance with the search engine guidelines you will notice that with time organic traffic will find its way to your site,” he says. Although this channel is technically ‘free,’ it does require a lot of your time, and is thus similar to a paid service, he says, adding that Google is the best source for learning more about SEO.

Source: Karen Blakeman’s Blog

Source: stuff.co.nz

“We’re excited to be able to offer enhanced services and unique content to our communities. Our partnership with UTEK will make it easier for those who are seeking in- and out-licensing opportunities to view the breadth and depth of what may be available to them,” states Paul Ratcliffe, CEO of Patents.com.

“Through this partnership we will syndicate licensing data from our online platforms direct to the growing Patents.com community, and millions of new visitors will now be exposed to our unique content. We believe this increased, well-targeted traffic will drive market efficiencies and help our clients realize more value from their IP portfolios,” adds Doug Schaedler, UTEK’s chief executive. Through the partnership, UTEK will assume an advisory role on the Patents.com Board of Directors as well as have a right of first refusal to acquire Patents.com over the next six-months.

Sources: Patents.com and Utek

• Performing Market Research Studies: Testing the Waters to De-Risk Your IP Investments, on Wednesday, February 24, 2010, features a high-powered roundtable of four marketing pros and an IP attorney, who’ll focus on improving triage using market research tools and strategies. CLICK HERE for full faculty and program details.
• Tech Transfer Marketing on a Shoestring: Guerilla Tactics in a Budget-Cut World, on Tuesday, March 9, 2010, will deliver a treasure trove of inventive, clever, out-of-the-box ideas to move your innovations to market without busting your budget, and also features a 30-minute idea-sharing add-on session. CLICK HERE for complete information and to register.

PLUS, don’t miss:

• TOMORROW, January 27: “Shrink Wrap” Your University’s Technologies for Industry: Packaging Your Innovations to Minimize Corporate Risk and Extract Optimum Licensing Value.
• IN TWO WEEKS, Tuesday, February 9: Patent Prosecution: Best Practices for Reducing Costs While Improving Patent Quality.

Unfortunately, he says, IP holders (universities, researchers, and start-ups) are often guilty of one or more marketing errors that can prevent them from achieving their ultimate goal. One such error involves letting others capture the potential added value of your IP. “Avoid commoditizing the value of your IP, if at all possible,” Drapp advises. “One of our clients produces a nano-material that creates a hypo-retardant barrier. Now, they could have licensed or sold their material in bulk to other manufacturers who would incorporate the benefits into their own products, thus capturing the added value in their respective markets. Instead, our client has created its own line of sealant products for the home improvement, boating, auto, aircraft, fishing and outdoor markets. So, which would you rather have — the eroding margins on a nameless bulk nano-material, or the higher margins and branding power of a line of products with the exclusive claim to the benefits of your proprietary technology? “

At nanoEdge, says Drapp, there is an ongoing effort to focus on added value opportunities to create new products and processes utilizing clients’ IP. “This will increase profit margins, increase valuations, and increase barriers to entry to potential competitors,” he says. “A raw material or single component is easier to reverse engineer or replace than a more complex product or process that incorporates trade secrets and other technologies with the core IP. This helps ensure that your core market value isn’t riding on a ‘one-trick pony.’” A detailed article on common errors in IP marketing appears in the January 2010 issue of Intellectual Property Marketing Advisor. To subscribe and read the full article, plus gain access to the entire archive of strategy-filled back issues, CLICK HERE.

1. Measure everything: “Wasteful marketing can be a real drain on a business’ budget,” say the authors. “Before you start any type of marketing, set up a system in which you can measure the success, or failure, of each marketing strategy and tactic.”
2. Have a good lead generation system: “Never in the history of marketing have there been so many ways to attract customers to a website, or store front; the trick is to sort through the clutter to find what works for your business and your customers,” the authors note. By knowing your customers, they say, you’ll know exactly in which medium your business should advertise.
3. Know your customers: “Building a marketing system without knowing your customers is like building a house on marsh land; it will collapse immediately,” the authors write. Knowing your customers, on the other hand, will allow you to determine how best to get your best prospects’ attention. “Get out of the office and interview them,” they suggest. “Find out what problems they have, what magazines they read, which websites they frequent. If you bury yourself in their world, you will build the foundation for a successful marketing campaign.”
4. Compete on value, not price: Too many business owners think that prospects simply want the lowest priced product or service, say the authors. “Once you find what your customers value, then you can charge a premium for it,” they advise.
5. Speak about your customers’ problems, not your products: “Often, business owners build an entire marketing system around the product specifications. For instance, the website and brochure will speak endlessly about how fast a signal processor is, or how much data a product can store,” the authors note. “Instead, these brochures should speak about the customers’ problems and how you, as a business owner, can solve them.”
6. Offer multiple products for multiple customers: Not all customers are the same; some may want an introductory offer, while others can’t wait to tell their friends about you, the authors note. “By treating every customer the same, you are doing a disservice to your business and your customer,” they warn.

Source: PRWeb

“VANOC set the stage for this kind of backlash early on because they were way too aggressive. . . . Now they’re in a case where other [companies] are saying, ‘We dare ya, go ahead, take a shot at us in court,”‘ says Meredith. Lawsuits to stop the ambush were more feasible when organizers were chasing mom-and-pop businesses like Vancouver’s 15-year-old Olympic Pizza, which VANOC pressured to change its name and five-ring-bearing signage. But tackling brazen campaigns mounted by large corporations like Scotiabank, Lululemon and Roots — who all argue they’re merely tapping an Olympic-related surge in national pride — means juggling the hassles of both legal costs and the potential for bad PR. “I think VANOC has shot itself in the foot by dealing with people in such a strict way before, because now there’s a perception in the mind of the public that VANOC wants to go too far,” says Mira Sundara Rajan, a UBC professor who holds the Canada Research Chair in Intellectual Property Law.

Vancouver was the backdrop when Scotiabank unveiled a photo and story-submitting contest that uses images of fans in red and white cheering an amorphous sporting event. A company spokesman denied the campaign is trying to associate with the Olympics, adding he’s confident it worked within organizer-issued guidelines. VANOC has exclusive Canadian marketing rights to Olympic brands until Dec. 21, 2012, and only official sponsors are allowed to market products directly tied to the Games.

Roots, which had a long history of suiting up Olympic athletes before ties were cut and The Bay got the contract in 2005, has not been lambasted for its “Canada Collection,” a line of outerwear from which some proceeds go to the Right to Play sports charity. But VANOC has excluded the charity from the Athletes Village because it’s sponsored by Mastercard, a competitor of Games’ sponsor Visa. VANOC stands by its ongoing response. “We still feel quite strongly that our approach from early on … was appropriate,” says Bill Cooper, director of commercial rights management, adding sponsors are “fairly satisfied.” Without its aggressive stance, he adds, “we believe the volume of infringements … would be considerably larger.”

Roots co-founder Michael Budman admits to “taking advantage” of the “joy and fabric” of the Games, but won’t characterize that as ambush marketing. “I look at VANOC as an organization that is so paranoid, so protective of something petty — their whole proposition during bidding was [the Olympics] is for the country, but now it’s only for sponsors,” he says. “In our opinion, VANOC has created a cloud of negativity around 2010.”

Source: Google News

• A description of the licensed technology
• Compensation terms including royalty rates and license fees
• Identity of the licensor and licensee
• Transaction background and history
• Market analysis and benefits of the licensed technology

This new edition is available for immediate download. For more detail and to order, CLICK HERE.

He quotes business strategist Michael Porter: “I used to see this area of corporate social philanthropy as the last thing on my agenda 10 years ago, but now I agree that social and economic issues are intertwined. Corporate philanthropy — or corporate social responsibility — is becoming an ever more important field for business. Today’s companies ought to invest in corporate social responsibility as part of their business strategy to become more competitive.”

Source: Business Success Secrets

“Research conducted at the University of Utah not only advances science, technology and medicine, but also has positive economic effects that are felt broadly outside of academia,” notes Jan Crispin, the study’s author and senior research economist at the Bureau of Economic and Business Research (BEBR) at the University’s David Eccles School of Business. Crispin estimated that every one million spent on sponsored research at the university supports 20 jobs in Utah, generates approximately $849,450 in earnings for Utah workers, contributes $1.4 million in GSP, and provides $86,135 in state and local tax revenue.

“In fiscal year 2009, the university collected a record $354.7 million in research funding,” notes Tom Parks, the university’s vice president for research. “This new study makes it easy to translate the power of that funding, not only for students and research outcomes on campus, but also on the economy of the entire state.”

Source: University of Utah News Center

• “Shrink Wrap” Your University’s Technologies for Industry: Packaging Your Innovations to Minimize Corporate Risk and Extract Optimum Licensing Value - Wednesday, January 27, 2010
• Patent Prosecution: Best Practices for Reducing Costs While Improving Patent Quality - Tuesday, February 9, 2010
• Performing Market Research Studies: Testing the Waters to De-Risk Your IP Investments - Wednesday, February 24, 2010
• Tech Transfer Marketing on a Shoestring: Guerilla Tactics in a Budget-Cut World - Tuesday, March 9, 2010

TAEUS is currently seeking to make it easier for TTOs to be found by people interested in particular types of IP, as well as making it easier for TTO staff to publish the information those visitors will eventually see. It has just released a product called TAEUS IPortalware — a content management system specifically designed to manage IP websites. “Basically, this a website engine designed for marketing IP and hosting an entire IP website,” Troyer explains. “The user logs in to an administrative interface, and uses a set of very simple forms that allow them to list IP, or portfolios, and tie them all together.”

“You also get a click-through from the most common patent search sites — content that is not really put out by TT offices, but it works in such a way that with a simple click people interested in licensing specific types of IP can get to your site,” adds Paul M. Smith, PhD, MBA, CLP, a patent agent with Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, NM, which beta tested the software and is about to go live with it. “In our case, the visitor can come to the Sandia site, put in keywords, and get a response back as to what our patents are,” Smith continues. “Part of the power is that in the TAEUS model folks can go to Internet search sites, put in the same keywords, and with its click-through capability go to many TTO sites and learn about the patents. It makes it easier for people with IP to find [related IP], and for people like us it’s easier to get information out on the web.

“The user is directed to the site through an icon that appears on the screen, which brings up another feature that Smith appreciates — the ‘pay-per-click’ model. “When someone clicks the icon, Sandia pays a small amount of money (less than a dollar) to TAEUS,” he explains. “This helps control the costs of marketing — although you do not know how many clicks there will be.” However, he adds, since the Sandia site is only being visited by people with a specific interest in its IP, those visitors are “really targeted.” A detailed article on effective characterization of IP appears in the January 2010 issue of Intellectual Property Marketing Advisor. To start an annual subscription and get the complete article, plus access to the entire archive of strategy-filled back issues, CLICK HERE.

Source: MediaPost

1. An attractive cover page with your company’s logo, location, contact information, and title.
2. An executive summary that includes current status, products or services, market, financial forecast, overall objectives, funding required, and return on investment schedule. “This portion of your business plan should be no more than two pages,” Kay advises.
3. A table of contents that gives investors a clear roadmap to the contents of the remainder of the document.
4. Detail on the company or organization, its objectives and management team.
5. Projected market and your expected market share based on real data.
6. Analysis of your products, discriminators and competition
7. Your marketing/selling strategy — how will you gain sales, customers, and market share.
8. Financial data — income, cost of sales (material, labor, overhead), operating expenses, assets (including equipment and intellectual property), cash flow forecast, and liabilities.”

The final essential step for a start-up business preparing its business plan is to proof the document for grammar and typos, check for readability, and clarity,” Kay adds. “Then package your business plan in a folder or as spiral bound document for presentation.”

Source: Madison Niche Marketing

Do Something Remarkable: “These days, it’s not enough to do something,” Ines writes. “You have to do something that will change people’s lives, make it easier, solve a problem.

Don’t do something because the money is good — success, along with financial stability, will come along once you create and develop the best product and/or service.”

Figure Out The Best Business Model: “An idea is not enough anymore,” says Ines. “What business model would be best for your company? For Google, business was not the first thought on their mind. They wanted to improve search results and user experience.” Think about a business model that would best suit your needs, but don’t let the money be your ultimate guide, Ines advises.

Focus on Doing Good: “It’s important to do good things with your company,” Ines says. “Don’t build your success on other people’s misery. Help people, help your community. Help your customers. It will come back to you.”

Customers Always Come First: “Do you treat your customers with respect? Do you value their business? Google’s first job is to satisfy the user,” says Ines. “When someone types in a query in Google’s searchbox, in a split of a second they will be presented with hundreds, thousands, and millions of results relevant to their query. Google’s goal is always improving their search experience, bettering their results and serving only relevant content. If this goal was replaced with another one, their market share would decrease.”

Treat Employees With Respect: How do you treat your employees? Do you value their opinion? Is it important for you to keep them happy and productive? “Google is Fortune Magazine’s #1 Best Place to Work,” notes Ines. “It’s because they treat their employees with respect, give them tools to grow and succeed. Your employees are your family.”

Source: SEO Rabbit

• Do they have an extensive and impressive portfolio?
• Is there a certain feel to all of the sites they have created, or are they flexible in their designs?
• Can any of their past clients be contacted to obtain references?
• Do they have structured planning and implementation processes?
• Are they available to start work soon?
• Do they do all of the work themselves, or do they outsource to others?
• Do they offer assistance in getting websites listed in the major search engines?
• Will a blog be included in addition to the main website?
• Who owns the intellectual property rights to the final website and the domain name?
• Is any post-design support offered?
• Is an hourly rate or fixed fee payment structure in place?
• How much payment needs to be made up front?
• Will they guarantee and stick to an agreed upon deadline?

“The answers to these questions should be used to narrow down the short list to three or so companies, who should then be asked to give a final quote,” says Walters. “If they are told beforehand that quotes are also being sought from their competitors, then their own quote will normally be more competitive. As a general ball park figure, a well designed 10-page website will cost an average of $2,000.”

Source: Internet Marketing

The pipeline overview is “absolutely effective,” says Rick Silva, director of UC Denver TTO. “We publish it for our licensing and business development folks, who use it to narrate ‘pipeline reviews’ with venture investors new to the Colorado scene, and to update the larger company business development folks at trade shows.” For example, Silva continues, “if we are meeting with a company we have not done business with before or [a prospect] who wants to get a better feel for what we do, we will conduct what we call a ‘pipeline review.’ We’ll sit down for an hour or so and walk through the overview. A brief description of the programs surround each piece of IP — what kind of patents have been done on the science, where our funds are coming from, and most important a needs assessment going forward — what additional funding will be required.”

“The pipeline overviews sometimes serve as an incentive by demonstrating the breadth of what have, and can help get people to commit to spend some time with us,” adds Lindsay Polak, marketing communications manager. “It’s a really good ‘door opener.’” A detailed article on the “pipeline overviews” 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.

1. Find new, smart people to follow. “Connections are essential for a productive Twitter experience, and that means connecting with the right people,” says Odden. Twitter polls, he says, should use a common hash tag (ex: #mypoll) that will tie the Questions and Answers together. “In doing so, the followers of your poll participants will be exposed to the Q&A and potentially participate,” he explains. “Others’ use of the common hashtag will reveal their replies, and you may find new and interesting people to follow.”
2. Collect great insights and tips from your followers. This is an obvious benefit for any poll, but asking the right questions can evoke some very useful tips and perspectives from your Twitter network that can be useful to you as well as the community at large, says Odden. “You can get tough questions answered that many others are searching for,” he explains.
3. Create an opportunity to engage with your Twitter network. “Connections are the Yin and Engagement is the Yang of social participation; they feed on each other,” says Odden. “Polls can create an engagement opportunity that allows your network to “show their stuff” on topics of interest, teaching you more about who you’re connected to and vice versa.”
4. Create an opportunity for your Twitter network to engage with each other. If you’ve successfully built a network or two or three on the social web, you know it’s not “all about you,” says Odden. Helping social network participants meet their needs, he notes, is a cornerstone of effective social networking. “Poll respondents and observers using the common Tweet poll hashtag will benefit from the same exposure to interesting insights and people as you will,” he says. “Successful polls with this objective quickly spawn discussions on various threads related to the original poll questions.”
5. Crowdsource blog, article, or conference presentation content that rewards participants. Asking questions on Twitter and then using the answers in a PowerPoint or blog post is an easy way to generate content, Odden notes, and doing so “in a way that recognizes those who contributed ideas via Twitter is even more powerful.” Let your network know you’ve used their feedback and list them as contributors in the PPT deck or article. Often times, they’ll tweet or re-tweet links back to the content — driving even more traffic and attention. “People will work for a living, but they’ll die for recognition,” Odden explains.
6. Identify potential candidates or consultants for hire or marketing partners based on their answers and interaction. It’s common to have casual connections with others on Twitter, notes Odden, and these casual connections may be people you don’t even know in real life. “Poll responses show insight from followers that helps me get to know them better — some of whom might be people that would be a great addition to our Social SEO Agency or who we can hire for certain projects,” he notes.
7. Build goodwill. Recognize certain Twitter contacts by dropping questions just for them to answer, and then acknowledge their answers, Odden advises. “This tactic isn’t for everyone, of course, and its effectiveness is based on real questions and real answers,” he cautions. “Manufactured interactions are most often weak and of little value. If there is a person you’d like to hire, get hired by, or connect with in some other way, building goodwill can reduce barriers and provide an opportunity for dialog.”
8. Attract new followers to yourself that notice the sudden use of a certain hashtag and the Q&A. “The polls on Twitter that I’ve run have not been particularly effective for growing a quantity of followers, but the quality (as in relevance of connection) has been very good,” notes Odden. “The hash tag takes the ‘conversation’ outside of the threaded discussion within your own Twitter network. It is essential, though, that the text used in the hash tag make sense towards the topic being discussed. Examples: #blogseo or #veganrecipes or #crmsoftware.”
9. Attract new followers to your Twitter network through the smarts of their participation. As previously noted, you can help your Twitter network benefit from interacting with each other through participation on Twitter polls. “When one of your connections answers a poll question, their response can catch the attention of other Twitter users following the hash tag,” says Odden. “This extension can lead to more followers for the members of your network that participate.”
10. Flush out survey questions on Twitter to see which questions to use, or what syntax to use in a more formal survey. “If you are in the business of conducting [market] research on a larger scale, sharing informal survey questions on Twitter can be a very useful litmus test for certain questions,” says Odden. “Content, syntax, relevance, and timeliness can all be tested so that the questions used in the formal survey are better suited for response.”

Source: Online Marketing Blog

1. How to incorporate a “stage gate” process into your innovation launch procedures.
2. What analytical tools you should be using when evaluating an innovation … and which ones to avoid.
3. How to “shrink wrap” your technologies for a quick and profitable transfer.
4. A step-by-step process for creating compelling technology offering memorandums.
5. How to avoid the five “deal killers” when negotiating your technology licenses.
6. How to use technology “dovetailing” to optimize the value of your IP.

This 90-minute audio program will bring you critical new insights into the corporate licencee’s decision-making process. For complete details and to register, CLICK HERE.

Also coming soon:

• Patent Prosecution: Best Practices for Reducing Costs While Improving Patent Quality - Tuesday, February 9, 2010
• Tech Transfer Marketing on a Shoestring: Guerilla Tactics in a Budget-Cut World - Tuesday, March 9, 2010

The first item on your agenda, says Eason, is to create a PR calendar for the year. Identify possible campaign themes (i.e., new technologies, internal marketing strategies). The next step is to obtain editorial calendars for the most important publications read by your target audiences, she continues. “These can usually be found on the advertising areas of publications’ websites. Make a note to send specific media pitches for these issues.” Your PR firm or internal marketing manager should also keep a database of all reporters and editors that cover your industry and area, Eason says. “Be sure to update it after each campaign, removing bad e-mail addresses and adding new contacts.”

Eason offers these additional PR pearls:

• Find out how reporters like to receive news releases and story ideas; most prefer e-mail. “Never add an attachment, as these may cause your e-mails to get caught in spam,” Eason warns.
• Editors appreciate excellent photos that complement your news releases and pitches. “Good art helps them visualize your story,” Eason notes.
• Does your website include a news section? If not, create a section with news releases, background information, and articles about your activities.
• Before you start promoting your stories to reporters and editors, contact them and offer to be a news source for interpreting industry trends; they are eager to learn about the latest developments, Eason explains. “They will appreciate your help — and will show their gratitude to you later,” she asserts.
• Offer advice columns on important topics. “Create a news release or article and send it to a well-researched media list of publications read by your customers and prospects,” Eason suggests.
• When news breaks in your area of expertise, sound off. “You can write a letter to the editor or make a comment in reaction to a newspaper or magazine article, comment on a blog, or call a local broadcast producer. Again — demonstrate your expertise,” says Eason.

Source: HotelWorld Network

The ideaLists site allows users to post an idea, its value, and any other relevant information. If a company or individual uses the idea in part or whole, appropriate compensation is encouraged. Compensation in this marketplace might take the form of a fee, a credit, or even providing the idea holder the budget to execute. Inversely, The ideaLists allow clients in need of good ideas –i.e., marketers in need of a unique promotion — to post needs with a budget attached. One example currently on the site: Incase is in need of a video to illustrate the company’s iPhone cases used in extreme situations.

Source: Design Taxi

• Go out there and just do it. Find strong mentors to emulate, and build yourself an advisory board (even an informal one) to help vet new ideas and plan your strategy.
• Talk to everyone and never be afraid to ask questions.
• Set clear goals and deadlines for yourself, and while perseverance is crucial, know when to cut your losses and move on.

Finally, the more [expletive] you throw on the wall, the more that has the potential to stick — even if that means getting a little dirty, so shoot the puck!

Source: Startup Professionals Musings

• Know the audience: “Research the target audience for the site,” Hiser advises. “Is it targeted at specific industries (e.g., pharmaceuticals), a particular geography, or a broad audience? Select your technologies and tailor your message based on the intended audience.”
• Keep it fresh: Nothing turns people off more than finding something interesting, only to be told it is not available anymore, says Hiser. “To avoid stale postings, keep a careful log of those technologies you have posted to each site and follow a regular schedule for updates, including removal of those that have been exclusively licensed or abandoned,” she recommends.
• Market it: Hiser suggests that rather than posting the patent abstracts, take the time to present a polished, market-based overview about each technology. “Describe the technology and outline the benefits and applications,” she says. “Provide a link to a web page with more details about the technology, such as images, drawings, patents, technical specifications, and demonstration videos. This will also help bring more traffic into your own website.”

Source: Fuentek Intellectual Property Marketing Blog

And don’t miss these upcoming events - click on the titles for more information:

• Successful Outsourcing for Tech Transfer Organizations - TOMORROW, January 6.
• “Shrink Wrap” Your University’s Technologies for Industry: Packaging Your Innovations to Minimize Corporate Risk and Extract Optimum Licensing Value - Wednesday, January 27
• Patent Prosecution: Best Practices for Reducing Costs While Improving Patent Quality - Tuesday, February 9, 2010

A few years ago, a couple of Mayo clinicians developed what is known as the Interactive Breath Control System. It’s an electronic visual guide for patients to help them know how they should control their breathing to make it optimal for surgeons to operate in the lungs and upper abdomen region. Mayo Clinic began selling the Breath-Hold device under the Mayo Clinic Medical Devices banner, but could never get enough traction, says Tim Anderson, president and CEO of Medspira. Anderson and his two partners convinced Mayo officials that while they excelled at dreaming up and developing medical products, they didn’t have the needed expertise to commercialize them. “They really aren’t a sales and marketing organization,” Anderson explains. “They are a hospital and a clinic.”

Source: Finance & Commerce

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.

How can you make your videos stand out among the thousands flooding the web? Myers offers these four tips:

1. Share your video as a response. Browsing YouTube will bring you in ‘content contact’ with videos that have high viewership, Myers notes. “Look for other videos that connect in some way to your video; you can be creative with the association, but there should be a plain connection,” he advises. “Post the URL of your video as a Video Response to the high-traffic video in order to ‘coat-tail’ some of the popular video’s traffic and bring it to your own video.”
2. Choose specific keywords. Use Google’s Keyword Tool and feed it the URL of a competing video page, your own product page, or any other relevant web property you either own or know of, suggests Myers. “The tool will suggest keywords that you should use in your own video’s title and in your description copy,” he notes.
3. Watch competing videos. This activity might be called “benchmarking,” or “best practice research,” notes Myers. “Watch popular videos on various video sharing sites,” he suggests. “Examine their content, their description, and their titles. Think about your next video production and imagine ways to mirror what their popular video does. Then implement those ideas, and you will increase your chances of obtaining similarly high traffic.”
4. Find new video sharing sites and get in on their ground floor. Google owns YouTube but indexes the entire web, Myers notes. “Feed the video page with sufficient information and an appropriate title, and you can expect a search engine presence on the keywords you pick — assuming those keywords aren’t too competitive,” he says.

Source: Articlesbase

1. Write down what you want. Marketing agencies will go the extra mile for clients that are fair and know what they want, says Power. “Don’t expect your agency to fathom what you want from a sketchy brief,” he cautions. “This results in unclear ground, unchecked expectations and problems in your relationship.”
2. Review and dumb down what you want, so what you get is categorically what you want. “Nobody wants to spend time working on the wrong thing,” says Power.
3. Make yourself available. Don’t assume completing your brief is the end of your job as a client, says Power. “Good partners will have a ton of questions regardless of how thorough you think your brief is — and you should encourage it and answer them all,” he advises.
4. Hire someone with a track record. “If you can’t settle on one agency, select two but do the decent thing and give them both a paying gig so they have something to invest in,” says Power. “You’ll get better end deliverables.” Agencies, he notes, rightly despise pitches as a necessary evil that gives away time/resources and creative ideas with no guarantee of resulting business and no protection of their IP.
5. Be prepared to pay the going rate — or a rate relative to the service, resources, and value on offer.
6. Don’t make unreasonable ‘creatively stifling’ demands on your agency partner. “Remember why you are outsourcing this specialist requirement in the first place,” says Power.
7. Celebrate milestones throughout the course of the project and don’t just wait for the end result. “Doing this brings the team closer together and encourages everyone to work harder and smarter,” Power explains.
8. Manage the internal communication of what you are doing externally. “This ensures that everyone from your sales teams to the guys who answer the phones and make deliveries will understand who you are, what you stand for, and what you are trying to communicate,” Power says — adding that too many organizations fail at this critical task.
9. Support your agency with recommendations, testimonials, and referrals if they have done an excellent job. “All good agencies work on the maxim of only being as good as their last job, so this is very important to them,” Power comments.
10. Above all, be positive and enjoy what you’re creating.

Source: The Marketing Assassin

Maintain a list of problems that are relevant to the research and technologies in the pipeline. “TTOs typically get involved in research commercialization efforts late in the research and testing process,” says Espey. “Get involved earlier in the process and start developing a list of problems to which the research can be applied.” Don’t just talk to the researchers, he adds; get business input from those who are not involved with the research or the research teams.

Develop long-term business relationships. Espey recommends you follow the old Chinese proverb, “Dig the well before you are thirsty.” Start developing business relationships with business leaders from a wide range of industries, he advises, and do this even before you have any applicable research or solutions for them. “These relationships will pay off in two ways,” Espey says. “You will have a better understanding of the types of challenges that these businesses face, and when you do have promising research technologies and solutions, you already have a relationship with the business or their contacts.”

Pair researchers with business mentors. “Researchers think like researchers; business people think like business people,” Espey notes. “Getting the two to communicate with each other versus talking to each other is a common technology transfer office challenge. Providing a business mentor to promising research leaders will help alleviate this common problem.”

Develop alternative commercialization strategies early. Good business people know that there is always a chance that their efforts may fail, and technology transfer professionals know this too. But “unfortunately, many researchers and inventors do not think about this, much less plan for it,” Espey notes. “Most inventors think that their invention is world changing and worth millions. They have visions of establishing a company based on their research or technology, selling it for millions, and retiring in the lap of luxury. The truth of the matter is that nine out of ten spinoffs and start-ups will fail. You, as the technology transfer officer, can improve these odds.” Espey notes that he sits on the advisory board for some startup-focused investment funds. “One of the strategies that we have developed recently is to go for the big distribution partnering deal with large companies,” he says. “When that doesn’t work, we find out why and have alternative proposals available. This alternative could be limited distribution agreements on licensing deals. It really doesn’t matter what the alternative is. What does matter is that you get to stay in the game and get a return on the sunk costs.”

Reduce risks for all involved. “In order to get more businesses interested in potential technology, look for new ways to reduce their potential risks,” Espey advises. “Right now cash is king. Instead of negotiating a lower royalty percentage, offer your potential licensor a deferred royalty agreement at a higher percentage. This is the business innovator’s version of ‘no interest payments for three years.’” This approach allows the business to conserve cash today and the university to reap more money in the long run, says Espey, and it’s better than the technology sitting on the shelf waiting to become obsolete.

Teach bootstrapping to your start-ups. Bootstrapping basically means to start and operate a business without much outside funding - but with plenty of plain old hard work using existing resources. It requires the entrepreneur to focus on sales and to hold fixed costs to an absolute minimum. “Bootstrapping requires a unique mindset that few lead researchers turned entrepreneurs can relate to,” he says. “It takes a special entrepreneur to be able to successfully bootstrap a business. Get some experienced bootstrappers on your advisory and consulting teams and pass the knowledge on to your start-ups.”

Partner with other TTOs. Unlike many organizations involved in the commercialization process, TTOs do not compete, says Espey. “Some technology transfer offices such as Stanford and MIT are the envy of their peers; however, most technology transfer offices do not reside in a geographic area that harbors entrepreneurship in its DNA,” he notes. Partnering with other TTOs offers many unique benefits that cannot be found through other means, Espey observes. “It opens up dialogue and support for represented research and technologies to new areas and new commercialization ideas,” he explains. “It develops relationships with other potential business partners and fosters potential research synergies.” Targeted TTO partnerships can lead to research combinations that together hold more commercialization potential, he adds. “This focused effort will, in the long run, yield a high degree of return on investment,” Espey asserts.

Source: Lowongan Kerjan Bank

Also coming soon:

• January 27, 2010: “Shrink Wrap” Your University’s Technologies for Industry: Packaging Your Innovations to Minimize Corporate Risk and Extract Optimum Licensing Value.
• February 9, 2010: Patent Prosecution: Best Practices for Reducing Costs While Improving Patent Quality
• March 9, 2010: Tech Transfer Marketing on a Shoestring: Guerilla Tactics in a Budget-Cut World

What are these centers like? A typical customer day at a 3M center begins with a team from a visiting company presenting an overview of their business to a group of 3M marketing and technology experts, who then pepper them with open-ended questions. The goal is to understand “what our customers are trying to accomplish, not what they say they need,” says John Horn, vice president for research and development at 3M’s industrial and transportation business.

Next is a visit to the “World of Innovation” showroom. The company has more than 40 of what it calls technology platforms — core technologies in areas like optical films, reflective materials, abrasives and adhesives — that can potentially be combined and applied to meet a range of needs in different markets. By exposing customers to these platforms, 3M hopes to prompt the type of novel connections — like using dental technology to improve car parts — that drive innovative solutions. “We never show completed products,” Horn says. “Doing that would constrain people’s thinking.”

Source: The New york Times

The rationale for the offering, Spiro continues, “is that scientists and engineers who are able to clearly explain what the relevance of their research is are more likely to form collaborations with other scientists, more likely to be understood by lawmakers who have the power to fund them, and will also have the ability to influence funding agencies for grants.” People who review grant proposals, she adds, may not specialize in the researcher’s field, making communication skills critical to getting the message across effectively. “What’s more, what if you’re making a presentation to a venture capital company?” she poses. “You want to be able to explain why your research is relevant; you do not want to get mired in the science.” A detailed article on Spiro’s marketing course appears in the December 2009 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.

The problem was underscored by the media platforms selected, Lefton continues. “Sure, there was TV and print, but anyone who travels by air knows the Woods/Accenture ads are ubiquitous in American airports and in many overseas air terminals; those will take months to swap out,” Lefton writes. “So integrated was Woods with Accenture that internal estimates put the cost of unwinding the association in the tens of millions, and it is a process that also will take months.”

Source: Street & Smith’s Sports Business Journal

• Write articles on a consistent basis. You should be writing articles — if not on a daily basis, then on a weekly basis, says Gruber. “These articles should be used for article submission; they should be on your blog, and they should be put into an auto-responder series,” he advises.
• Give away your best tips and advice. “Truly insightful information is a rare commodity, so if you reveal some of your best secrets that no one else is sharing, you will automatically become a thought leader,” says Gruber.
• Be motivated by generosity, not by self-interest. People are more likely to follow altruists - and they instinctively know the difference, says Gruber. “Don’t ruin your article marketing efforts by writing an amazing article — and then try to sell them in the bio box,” he warns. “Earn your prospect’s respect first by telling how you can help them.”
• Be different. If you are writing the same thing as everyone else and just using different words, how does this make you the expert? This fails to “build a foundation of expertise,” says Gruber. “Quantity your experience,” he advises. “Record what you currently know about your industry that others may not know; focus on uncommon expertise and wisdom.”
• Use proven article templates that will help you write articles and content that prove you are a thought leader. “For example, a case study template will help you write an article that shows prospects that you are the expert - and that you have gotten the desired results,” Gruber explains. (Gruber offers his own templates at http://www.TryMyFreeArticleTemplates.com.)
• Submit your article to the top websites, e-zines and blogs. “Submitting your articles to article directories like EzineArticles.com is good for building links and improving your search engine optimization, but it [does not help] you become a thought leader,” notes Gruber, “Anyone can get published on article directories (including kids) as long as you follow their editorial guidelines.” The key to success, he says, is to get your articles published on top, credible sites. Gruber says his articles appear, for example, on sites like MarketingProfs.com, About.com, and SiteProNews.com.
• Turn your articles into videos and submit them to the top video sites like YouTube and Viddler. “As a thought leader, you want to get your message out to as many people as possible in as many formats as possible,” says Gruber.

Source: PowerHomeBiz.com

Industry needs to communicate “precisely what innovations we require in order to stay competitive,” said Julie Shimer, CEO of Welch Allyn, a New York-based medical equipment manufacturer, and a member of the task force, at the press conference where the report was released. She added that industry needs to change the habit of waiting to see what researchers come up with, instead “challenging them to develop ideas that would help our strategic needs and plans.” The report calls this “flipping the model.” According to Nathan Tinker, executive director of the New York Biotechnology Association, cooperation between academia and the biotechnology industry is “a key to the growth of the industry and to the development of life saving strategies.”

Source: Before It’s News

And don’t miss these outstanding audioprograms coming in January:

• Successful Outsourcing for Tech Transfer Organizations, January 6, 2010
• “Shrink Wrap” Your University’s Technologies for Industry: Packaging Your Innovations to Minimize Corporate Risk and Extract Optimum Licensing Value, January 27, 2010

The ‘snowman’ is made of two tiny tin beads, normally used to calibrate electron microscope lenses, which were welded together with platinum. A focused ion beam was used to carve the snowman’s eyes and smile, and to deposit a tiny blob of platinum for the nose. The miniature figure is just 0.01 mm across, or about a fifth of the width of a human hair.

The clever video begins by focusing on some type on a page, and continues to zoom in until it takes you inside a single tiny character on the page, and then drills down further until eventually the ‘snowman’ is revealed. The video was more than just a cute trick. On CNN on Sunday morning, December 20th, after showing the video the reporters segued into a discussion of nanotechnology and how it would guide the future of medicine. Marketing mission accomplished.

Source: Telegraph

Kordal calls this “a measure of your innovation productivity — how many new discoveries and inventions are being made per dollars spent on R & D.” He also stresses that “the more opportunities you have to license technology, the more success you will have.” Bearing that in mind, the university spends a great deal of time and energy recognizing faculty members who are successful at licensing or patenting technology. For example, it most recently presented Certificates of Commemoration to first-time inventors; faculty that have reported inventions and submitted patent applications to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office; and those who have had their technologies licensed to an outside company for commercialization. “The awards ceremony helps a lot,” says Kordal. “It is important to honor faculty members and recognize their achievements and accomplishments.” The award recipients are given modest honoraria (enough to buy a nice dinner), plaques, and certificates. The ceremony is generally held once a year. Of particular note is the recognition of inventors who have made disclosures for the first time — the “new kids on the block,” as Kordal calls them. “You will always get your share of serial inventors, but we try to involve as much faculty in disclosures as we can,” he says. A detailed article on these internal marketing strategies appears in the December 2009 issue of Intellectual Property Marketing Advisor. For subscription information, CLICK HERE.

However, he adds, “when times are tough, ad agencies, which have huge fixed costs, will often pitch business that is out of their ‘sweet spot’ because they desire the revenues and want to keep their creative and backroom staffs busy. In an effort to acquire these ‘sub-prime’ accounts, agencies will often bring in their top people to pitch this marginal business.” When top talent working on high-visibility accounts tell the erstwhile client how much the agency wants their business, these smaller accounts can easily become over-impressed, says Berger. “The thought of this big-time Madison or Michigan Avenue agency wanting to work for them can be quite enticing, but before you fall madly in love, ask some crucial questions,” including:

• Are these wonderful people soliciting my business actually going to be working on my account?
• What are the specific deliverables I can expect from this agency?
• How important is my account going to be to this agency?

In the selection process, be sure you are introduced to the specific individuals who will be handling your account, says Berger. Make sure the chemistry is right, and that their backgrounds and experience mesh with your expectations. “Take a close look at other accounts this prospective account team is working on,” he advises. “If the account team, for example, is also working on a major high-profile, high-budget account, won’t that high-profile account take precedence over your needs?” The key, he concludes, “is to find a compatible agency that truly values your business.”

Source: The Wiglaf Journal

• Competitive Analysis Valuation (CAV) software provides a straightforward method for determining IP value. Created by nationally recognized IP law expert Ted Hagelin, the CAV Software yields clear and logical valuation results through a single program platform for negotiation, planning and reporting purposes. CLICK HERE for details.
• ktMINE provides hands-on access to an incredibly rich source of royalty rate data in more than 6,000 searchable full-text license agreements and detailed agreement summaries. This online, interactive IP database allows you to quickly find true market comparables and benchmarks. CLICK HERE for details.
• The US FDA Regulatory Calculator provides users with a potential FDA predicate, regulation product code, and the classification and regulatory pathway associated with a medical technology. With this tool, you’ll save hours in initial research and eliminate the need for outside experts early in the process - as well as minimize the potential for miscalculations with due diligence, technology assessment, planning, and commercialization. CLICK HERE for details.

• Determine ‘must-haves’: Marketing professionals need to customize the way they track their digital marketing campaigns, says the firm. “They should take a look at what kind of measuring tools they currently use,” and ask the following question: Are the goals set for a web reporting platform meeting the organization’s needs? “By creating a list of must-haves, it’ll be easier to narrow down what the needs are and how they can be fulfilled and by which products,” the firm explains.
• Add Tracking To Your E-mail Campaigns: You can add tracking parameters to your e-mail marketing activity so marketers can start tracking visits that are driven by e-mail efforts, as well as what those visitors do once in your web site, says Screen Pilot. “Setting up to measure conversions, from shopping carts or other areas of your site that are important to you, will enable you to see which e-mail campaigns have higher returns on investment (ROI) than others,” they say. “With this tip, you can now test scientifically based on the ROI and not solely on the click-through rates and engagement factors.”
• Are Your PPC Campaigns Set-Up Correctly? If you have potential customers click on your Pay-Per-Click (PPC) ads and immediately leave your site, your advertising money is wasted, says the digital marketing firm. “You could be missing opportunities if your web statistics aren’t giving you the whole picture about the visitors you get from paid search channels like Google, Yahoo! and Bing,” they say. “Reporting from search engines only goes halfway in educating you on how effective your PPC actually is. Set up your reporting to measure key performance indicators from paid channels. It can help you increase ROI and make intelligent decisions about how and where to spend your marketing dollars.”
• Don’t Rely on 3rd Party Reporting: It is all-too-common that the number of clicks the advertisers say you have is different than what you receive. “Countless times we are requested to create audit trails for costly marketing channels that report higher numbers of clicks from their networks than you actually receive,” Screen Pilot shares. “Using your web statistics platform correctly will tell you exactly what traffic you received from a specific campaign and the value of that traffic.”
• Track Calls from Campaigns: If you generate business offline, you need to track call volumes generated from each specific digital campaign, says Screen Pilot. “This will easily tell you how effective a campaign’s response is when people go online but don’t convert,” they explain. “Quickly learn what channels such as PPC, e-mail, banner ads and others create calls and which don’t. By adding this new dimension it might make you adjust some efforts for best returns.”

Source: Earth Times

With this product, says TAEUS, licensing managers can enter, edit and characterize IP listings on their site, including adding images and attachments by using a series of easy-to-use forms. In addition, the system provides tracking and reporting tools. IPortalware sites are customized to match the existing look and feel of an entity’s existing web site. The new product is a complement to another new offering from TAEUS, its Global Patent Syndicate (GPS) system, which may be its most distinguishing characteristic from a marketing perspective. The GPS system allows users who post a technology to also have it automatically posted on other IP sites worldwide. “IPortalware is integrated with the Global Patent Syndicate (GPS), so customers can manage market offers on their local site, but also syndicate them globally,” Nutter explains. “The GPS will have the effect of unifying a single market for IP while still maintaining all the management of patents and other IP at the local level.”

According to TAEUS officials, IPortalware will soon add a ‘wizard’ that will help turn dry invention summaries into a marketing-focused format. It will prompt the inventor to add characterizations of their patent, describe the inspiration for the work, and supply other key information for prospects, and also link inventor workflow information back to the licensing manager, so he will know when the inventor has read documents, agreed to terms, etc.

Source: Your Story

Centralize IP agreement search and analysis. This data repository houses over 6,000 public documents and contains license agreements, services contracts, referral agreements, and more. Users can run unlimited searches and see unlimited results, including all royalty rates and full text agreements.

Refine your search to find true market comparables. Before an agreement is added to the database, ktMINE analysts review each using a 30+ checkpoint process. During the review process, analysts perform additional research to account for and identify any discrepancies or gaps within agreements. This consistent procedure ensures that all key licensing terms are accurately captured and categorized. Your ktMINE search will uncover the most relevant IP agreements without any “noise” or raw data to slow down or skew results.

Summarize key agreement details to quickly analyze results. View the context of full agreements immediately with in-depth summaries that list key licensing terms and agreement details. To further enhance your analysis, you’ll also find charts and tables that quickly reveal big picture context and trends for an entire set of agreements.

Access is made available through affordable 2-day and 5-day passes, which can be activated at the user’s convenience and include unlimited usage during that period. For complete details or to order, CLICK HERE.

David Brimm, President of BrimmComm, a public relations agency based in the Chicago area, offers these five tips for interacting with local reporters looking for the “big scoop”:

1. Appoint a spokesperson equipped with talking points. “It is important that at this point, a single manager is the spokesperson for the organization.” If the head of the organization is uncomfortable talking to reporters, another senior manager is fine, says Brimm. “He or she should be equipped with three talking points (i.e. what happened, what is being done, how long might the situation last),” he adds. Here’s another tip from Brimm: If it’s still early after the incident, it’s fine to say you’re gathering facts and will have information at ‘XYZ’ time. “This buys you a little time to get your information and talking points together,” he explains.
2. Make sure that you have the contact information for key personnel (finance, HR, etc.). “That means cell phone numbers, pagers, home phones, even vacation homes, so that they can be reached in an emergency,” says Brimm. “It is amazing how many crises occur after hours, on weekends or during holidays, so keep those numbers handy.”
3. If you are concerned about public relations strategies, bring in an outside PR consultant to take you through the crisis. “He or she can bring in an outside perspective and formulate a game plan,” Brimm explains. “A seasoned PR professional who’s handled crises in the past may save your organization a lot of embarrassment — and money — in the long run.”
4. In the event of death or injury at a lab or other place of business, management must quickly reach out to the local authorities. “This will send a message that you are controlling the situation and working with the proper people,” says Brimm. “Never publicly divulge the names of those hurt or killed until their families have been notified. Never speculate to the media about how the accident may have occurred; that’s the role of the police.” When the victims’ names have been released, he adds, always address the media with concern and compassion, with messages such as: “Our first thoughts go out to the family of our employee.”
5. Instruct your employees that only a single spokesperson is allowed to talk with reporters and all calls must be forwarded to that person. “Do not let your receptionist talk to reporters,” warns Brimm. “Never say ‘no comment,’ but do say you don’t know the answer to something and will get an answer as quickly as possible. In a void, reporters will fill in the unknowns with their own opinions.”

Most of all, Brimm, advises, don’t panic. “The key to addressing a crisis is to approach it with calm and forethought,” he says. “Think about your options and take the time to formulate a plan. Don’t jump into the fray until you’ve thought the response through.”

Source: Understanding Marketing

The $12.3 million National Center for Research Resources grant was awarded to the University of Florida and collaborators at Cornell University, Indiana University, Weill Cornell Medical College, Washington University at St. Louis, the Scripps Research Institute, and the Ponce School of Medicine in Puerto Rico. The grant covers a two-year period. The technological foundation of the network is provided by VIVO, open-source software developed at Cornell that allows people to search all publicly known information about a specific topic or researcher in a single site. So, for example, a search for the word “cancer” yields hundreds of results, but they are in turn broken up into categories like “people,” “opportunities,” and “topics.” Clicking on “topics” takes you to another set of subgroups that allows searchers to more quickly find exactly what they want.

Using VIVO, says Conlon, is “a perfect fit” with the NIH’s goal to establish a national network of scientists containing verifiable data. The new program will draw information about scientists from official, verifiable sources and make it available using a type of technology called the Semantic Web. “With a social network there’s no way to track the information down,” he notes. “But if the university says that so and so is a professor emeritus, that is verifiable.” For example, information about researchers’ positions will come from their employers; a listing of their published articles will come from the journals; while researchers will provide information regarding their interests themselves. Although users will still view the information on what looks like regular Web pages, VIVO actually collects the facts a person wants and assembles its own page. A detailed article on this new network appears in the December 2009 issue of Intellectual Property Marketing Advisor. For subscription information, CLICK HERE.

Not having a clear business plan. “The mantra here is focus, focus, focus,” advises McDemus. “If you try to become all things to all people, you will likely end up being nothing to nobody.” Investors, he says, back business plans that are clear and show some rational path to acceptable returns.

Failing to identify a market for your product/service. Having and developing a product or service is one thing, but finding someone to buy it is a whole different story, says McDemus. “Unfortunately, some entrepreneurs make the mistake of investing time and money into building the product or service before they’ve even considered who is going to buy it or how you are going to market and sell it to them,” he says. “Inventors that most often suffer from this mistake are the founders themselves, friends and family and, sometimes, angels. Very often it is the technical entrepreneur who may get caught up in this problem as their skill set tends to focus them on product capabilities and features, and maybe not sufficiently on the need for those capabilities or features by the potential customer.”

Not being able to re-invent as you go. McDemus cites as a positive example the movie Heartbreak Ridge, with Clint Eastwood starring as a gunnery sergeant in the U.S. Marine Corps. “Anytime his soldiers would run into an obstacle or an unexpected problem, he would tell them ‘improvise, adapt and overcome,’” says McDemus. “This is the perfect mantra for an early-stage start-up.” Even the “best laid” plans run aground, he notes, and you need to be able to turn the ship on a dime and possibly take a different route to address a problem.

Failing to build a sustainable business around intellectual property. “Intellectual property is only one leg of the stool; you need all of the legs if you want the stool to stand and not wobble or fall down,” says McDemus. “The only way to monetize intellectual property is to build a sustainable business around it. This is the gap that technology transfer offices at the university level try to overcome on a daily basis.” IP, he notes, is created as part of the academic or research and development process, and the university or professor desires to realize some value from that IP. “However, the university lacks the other legs to the stool and has to seek the private sector’s help to fill in the gaps,” he notes.

Source: VC Deal Lawyer

Also, join us on January 6 for Successful Outsourcing for Tech Transfer Organizations. Our expert faculty will focus on how to implement an effective outsourcing strategy to reduce your backlog of invention files, get more deals done, and boost faculty relations. A detailed case study of Texas Tech University’s outsourcing experience will provide valuable takeaways and lessons learned. CLICK HERE for full details.

Gara concedes that Dubai cannot compete with London or San Francisco when it comes to research universities, availability of venture capital, or an ecosystem of innovators, which he acknowledges are key ingredients for a city friendly to start-ups. “But,” he asserts. “It can compete and win in the race to attract entrepreneurs from across the world.”

Source: The National

Organizers of the Innovate Indiana Fund plan to fund the creation of four or five start-up companies each year. In addition, they set as goals that one in four early seed investments also obtain non-IU seed funding during subsequent seed stages, and that half of late seed investments obtain other venture capital funding. Tony Armstrong, president of Indiana University Research & Technology Corp., says funds could begin to flow to start-ups in 2010. The RTC will offer start-ups access to business incubation and laboratory facilities at the Emerging Technology Center in Indianapolis and the recently opened IU Innovation Center in Bloomington, while also providing business planning and development resources, investment “pitch” preparation, and introductions to investors.

Funded solely from university and private donor sources, Innovate Indiana will provide $5 million over the next five years in early stage seed funds and another $5 million over that same period for late stage seed investment. Individual early seed investments will range from $50,000 to $150,000 each, while late seed investments would range from $150,000 to $350,000 each, according to IU vice president for engagement Bill Stephan. “This new fund can also play a part in attracting other top talent to the university as it sends a clear signal that IU is focused on entrepreneurial research and understands that commercialization must be a priority for the future,” adds Stephan.

Source: Indiana Economic Digest

• Unique Voice - “Take a stand with a clearly defined message,” Morse advises. “Demonstrate you are the leader and expert in a given field. Break new ground with ideas that challenge the status quo, creating opportunities for prospects and customers to take a new look at your organization.”
• Extend Your Reach - Take on public speaking opportunities, start a newsletter, author a blog, or get published, Morse suggest. “True independent thought leadership is not about publishing ideas exclusively on your company website,” he notes. “It’s about creating a uniquely defined, forceful, and compelling vision so your ideas are sought out and published on someone else’s website.”
• Inform, Don’t Sell - While thought leadership must support an organization’s overall marketing direction, it should generously provide insights from which others can benefit, says Morse. “Challenge your audience to think outside the box by presenting useful information; invite others into the conversation,” he recommends. “Be willing to test your ideas and assumptions, especially by extending your reach through social media.”
• Long Term View - As a marketing tactic, thought leadership is not about filling the sales funnel for the upcoming quarter, Morse explains. “It’s about building relationships and moving from being seen as only a supplier to being seen as a trusted advisor,” he says. “Thought leadership is not a form of marketing collateral; it’s a long-term strategy whose results are best measured over time.”

Morse recognizes that thought leadership is not for every organization. “However, for those organizations seeking an effective pull tactic to balance the marketing investment in standard push marketing techniques, a thought-leadership program offers a unique longer-term return on investment,” he says.

Source: Scanlines

On January 27, serial inventor and innovation expert Nicholas Webb will headline “Shrink Wrap” Your University’s Technologies for Industry: Packaging Your Innovations to Minimize Corporate Risk and Extract Optimum Licensing Value. He’ll show participants how to present IP with a solid, in-depth market analysis and adopt proven analytical methods used by corporations to identify and plug any holes that could affect valuation. Attendees will gain unique insights into how to meet and exceed corporate expectations, and de-risk IP for a faster, smoother and more lucrative deal. CLICK HERE for full details.

And don’t miss next Wednesday’s distance learning session: Post-License Monitoring and Support: Performance and Revenue Enhancement Strategies (and when all else fails, how to pull the plug and take back your IP!)

• If one of your organization’s inventive personnel had a “great idea” this morning, how long would it take before you knew about it?
• How confident are you that your current systems would actually capture that “great idea?”
• If you had a “great idea” this morning, what tool(s) would you use to capture it for the organization?
• After you capture your “great idea,” what do you do with it next?
• How many purpose-specific idea capture tools does your organization provide to inventive personnel?
• Does your organization provide any specialized idea capture tools that are specifically designed for key inventive personnel?
• What inputs does your organization provide to foster an idea-rich environment?
• Which department and/or employee(s) is/are responsible for processing captured ideas?
• Are captured ideas indexed in a manner that allows inventive personnel to review the current and past ideas of others?
• How many patent applications did your organization file last year?

Source: Bipo

BioAccelerate is just the most recent effort in a three-pronged approach to growing the commercial bioscience industry in New York City, explains Gotsch. The fund, she notes, was established in 1996-97, spearheaded by Henry Kravitz of Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. One of the fund’s major initiatives, she continues, has been to build the city’s commercial bioscience industry. “We did a study about 10 years ago and concluded that there was a huge, huge base of biomedical research here, but we were not capitalizing on it,” Gotsch recalls. “To the extent that start-ups were spun out of universities, they typically went somewhere else.”

The fund identified three key needs: Space, capital, and management. Space was addressed first, says Gotsch. “We worked closely with the city, and we’re in the initial phase of New York City’s first major life science commercial office park, with ImClone Systems as the anchor,” she reports. The project, called East River Science Park, is located just south of NYU Medical School on city-owned land and will have one million square feet when it is built out. “We worked to push it forward in several ways,” Gotsch says. “For example, the New York City Biotech Initiative, whose site is run jointly with the New York City Economic Development Corporation, catalogues all the resources in New York City, and shows how we rank against other places seen as bioscience centers.” Gotsch notes that “when we looked at any metric — NIH dollars, award winners, and so on — we were either one, two, or three; but we had no commercial sector. We had science, and late-stage money, but companies were lacking other resources.” A detailed article on BioAccelerate appears in the December 2009 issue of Intellectual Property Marketing Advisor. For subscription information, CLICK HERE.

The incubator will provide business development, mentoring and space for start-up technology companies committed to Western New York. The 21,000-square-foot, two-story facility can accommodate up to 30 companies that will utilize services and space for up to three years, and then relocate. Upon graduating from the incubator, these businesses will be guided to permanently settle in Western New York.

Source: The Observer

“Our goal at nanoEdge is to help our clients productize and commercialize their intellectual properties to maximum advantage,” says Drapp. “Licensing, technology transfer, reengineering and design, new product development, mergers or acquisitions, venture capital, joint ventures, strategic partnerships — we’ll leverage our networks and whichever channels and strategies will produce the best business and financial outcomes for each client.” This kind of multi-focal approach has been lacking in the marketing of nanotech IP, Drapp maintains. “It’s not enough to give somebody in your company a business development title to promote the mousetrap you think you have in your hand,” he says. “You have to be able to see the emerging opportunities and identify innovative ways to combine that mousetrap with other technologies to create entirely new products and markets. This requires a particular skill set and experience base that can conceptualize and execute across multiple disciplines and industries and connect dots that others aren’t seeing yet.” That type of expertise, he continues, “is even more critical for nanotech companies because more often than not, the true value of their IP is not in a single product but rather in the application of their IP to other products, services and technologies — what I term ‘nanosynergistics.’ You can’t leverage this kind of integrated value via a traditional in-house sales and marketing model. You need a bigger network and higher levels of access. And you have to be able to envision and execute across multiple disciplines and industries.”

Source: PRWeb

• Next Tuesday, December 8th: Tech Transfer Partnerships: Establishing Effective Legal and Operational Structures for Long-Term Success
• Wednesday, December 16th: Post-License Monitoring and Support: Performance and Revenue Enhancement Strategies (and when all else fails, how to pull the plug and take back your IP!)
• Wednesday, January 6th: Successful Outsourcing for Tech Transfer Organizations
• Wednesday, January 27th: “Shrink Wrap” Your University’s Technologies for Industry: Packaging Your Innovations to Minimize Corporate Risk and Extract Optimum Licensing Value

The idea for the self-assessment tool originated several years ago when H5N1 (Avian flu) was a looming threat and “we were ill-prepared to deal with a massive surge of patients,” Kellermann recalls. “We pulled together a group of experts to develop an algorithm for a hypothetical pandemic.” When H1N1 “exploded” out of Mexico, he continues, “we quickly pulled [the algorithm] off the shelf and looked at it in light of new intelligence from the CDC, and realized it had immediate utility.” The hypothetical risk factors were modified, resulting in an algorithm for H1N1. At that point, says Kellermann, he began a dialogue with Cory Acuff, PhD, a senior licensing associate with Emory’s TTO. “The traditional approach would be to be careful about public exposure, get all your protections lined up — do things by the book,” says Kellermann. “But I told him in this case that would not work; it would not be feasible from a time perspective.” To have an impact on the burgeoning epidemic, he explains, the algorithm needed to be rapidly deployed, and national experts in public health and informatics had to be engaged. “This was completely contrary to how you would traditionally approach IP,” Kellermann acknowledges.

Nonetheless, “from day one Cory said that as far as Emory was concerned, they wanted things to happen as quickly as possible, and if at the end of the day people knew Emory played a role he’d be happy. It was incredibly liberating to know you could go anywhere and talk to anyone about the concept” without worrying about IP protection issues,” Kellerman notes.

“We see our role as the creation and dissemination of new knowledge; that’s the overlying mission of the university. We are part of the university, so the TTO works in that context,” Acuff explains. A detailed article on the marketing of the H1N1 algorithm appears in the December 2009 issue of Intellectual Property Marketing Advisor. For subscription information, CLICK HERE.

Among the many amendments made to the original 2000 agreement between the UI and Fox/Atkins, which gave exclusive rights to Fox/Atkins to develop the university’s research park, is a provision that calls for the university to reimburse the developer for marketing expenses. The amendment, set to expire in May 2010 when the main development agreement also expires, allows for Fox/Atkins to be reimbursed up to $150,000 a year for marketing expenses. Those costs typically encompass activities ranging from producing brochures to fees from architecture and engineering firms that draw up suite designs for prospective companies. But when Fox/Atkins sent a new tenant a $50 welcome basket, UI paid for it. When the developer held a picnic for interns, had an evening social hour at the park for tenants, or took possible tenants out to dinner, UI paid for it, according to a review of receipts submitted to the university.

Back when the university was planning the research park, organizers envisioned a “dual role” between the developer and the university for marketing the park, says Ed McMillan, a UI trustee and Greenville, IL, businessman who chairs the research park board of managers. “As a reality of making that function work effectively, it became obvious a little more of that responsibility, marketing, should and would be worn by the developer and less of it by the (UI’s) vice chancellor for research’s office,” McMillan says. In the original agreement, Fox/Atkins signed off on employing a full-time marketing director whose responsibilities would include developing and implementing a plan, working with prospective companies about moving into the park, and preparing marketing materials for prospective companies. In 2002 developer Peter Fox began pitching the idea that UI should pay for additional marketing expenses and hand over more marketing responsibility to the firm. At the time, the UI did not have anyone really marketing the park, he notes. Officials listened; in 2006, the development agreement was amended and the marketing agreement committed UI to reimbursing the developer up to $250,000 a year for marketing-related expenses, including hiring an architect, engineer or other firm to prepare space proposals; any expenses related to researching or consulting needed to understand a company; hiring people to help prepare a marketing or sales proposal; and hiring a grant writer to help apply for government or nongovernmental funds. The agreement was amended again, in early 2009, reducing the maximum expenses the UI would reimburse to the current $150,000 level, since the developer was not spending the maximum, explains university VP for technology and economic development Avijit Ghosh. A new provision now prohibits UI from reimbursing the developer for any expenses for alcoholic beverages.

Source: The News-Gazette

Content is king: Make sure you have lots of content on your site, and that you update it regularly, Gannon advises. Create an editorial schedule that states when you will post — and on which topic — and then stick to it. “Although frequent updates are good, just getting started and sticking to a regular schedule (even if it means you’re only posting every couple of weeks or once a month) is still very useful,” he says.

Acquire links to your site — the more relevant, the better: The more links you get from relevant and respected sites, the better your SEO ranking will be, Gannon says. “For example, one link to your company’s website from a nytimes.com article about your industry is going to be weighed more highly than 10 links from blogs that have nothing to do with your industry,” he asserts.

Make your content SEO friendly: There are consultants as well as products and services that can help you make your site SEO friendly; make sure you are making your site more appealing to the search engine crawlers. “In some cases, especially if you’re a web-based business, it may make sense to develop the SEO expertise in house,” Gannon offers. “One SEO friendly-practice is using META tags with the specific keywords you’d like to rank for, and to include those keywords within your content text as well.” On the flip side, he warns, sites that are too Flash-heavy often don’t index well with Google.

Source: Yet Another (ex-)VC Blog

The CAV Software gives TTOs and other users a single, straightforward method for determining IP value. Created by nationally recognized IP law expert Ted Hagelin, the CAV tool yields clear and logical valuation results through a single program platform for effective negotiation, planning and reporting. The easy-to-use system includes detailed explanations and instructions for each step of the process, and over 75 research resources to obtain the information needed for valuation. For complete details and to order, CLICK HERE.

• Make it look professional: Have a clear background for your video, without clutter or pictures, Hagen advises. “Keep the background consistent with the lifestyle your business is promoting,” he says. “For example, a recreational business could shoot video on the beach, on the slopes, or on a golf course.”
• Stress professional delivery: Make sure anyone featured in the video is speaking directly into the camera as if they were speaking to a person, says Hagen. “They need to convey a strong sense of confidence to be viewed as credible.”
• Make it sound professional: Many online videos are shot using the built-in camera microphone; this can lead to bad audio, which is a leading factor in high video bounce rates, Hagen warns. “Invest in good audio by purchasing a lavaliere microphone and wire up the talent four to five inches under their chin,” he advises.
• Keep it short: Don’t make your marketing video too long, Hagen cautions. “It should be 2-3 minutes max — and the shorter, the better,” he says. “Only 36% of viewers watch online videos longer than 2 minutes.” Training videos should be in the 20-minute range per topic, he adds.
• Choose the video name carefully: It is important to find the right keywords to use in the video’s name in order to receive the most hits possible, says Hagen. For help, “go to ‘Google Keyword’ and paste the URL of a competitor’s video page or your own product page,” he suggests. “The tool will then suggest the best keywords for the title and video description in order to gain more viewers.”

Source: AllBusiness.com

1. Define your customer. It is essential to define the profile of your ideal customer; do this by analyzing your current customers, based on how much profit you make from them. “Most companies discover that 80% of their [business] comes from 20% of their customers,” says Jackson. “If you can replicate that 20% of your customers, then you can double your profit while only increasing your workload by 20%.” Profile those 20% of your clients, she advises, and then use that profile to search for new prospects. Once you’ve done that, then you can go ahead and start building a database of relevant contacts.
2. Create your database. Talk to one of the many prospect list providers and find one that can provide you with a list to match your ideal prospect as closely as possible. “You need a provider who can hone that list down to [those] prospects with whom you would have a meaningful discussion about what you can provide,” says Jackson. “These will be the companies that get close to your profile, and where the benefits of your product/service can address their business pressures.”
3. Maintain your database. Once you have your prospect database set up, it is vital that you continually maintain and enhance your data.
4. Don’t forget your existing customers. Current clients are far more inclined to buy from you than new ones, so every effort should be made to ensure they are included within your lead generation stream.
5. Carefully plan your approach. To achieve the most targeted approach possible, it is essential to create a critical path, says Jackson. “It’s no use just calling people here, there and everywhere; you need a considered timescale detailing who you’re going to contact, when and how,” she suggests. “With the details plotted, there is no danger of over-contacting some people and never contacting others.”
6. Mix and match communication. The most proactive approach to contacting your prospects is by telephone, says Jackson. “That’s the only real way to answer objections there and then,” she explains. “For maximum success, though, you need to use a range of marketing techniques and approaches all nicely coordinated to take your prospect on a journey from ‘I haven’t spoken to you before’ to ‘Yes, I’d like to sign.’”
7. Tell them a story. “Before initiating contact, make sure you are 100% sure of what you want to say and how,” says Jackson. “Create a list of the five key points that you want to communicate and make sure you are clear on what you want the recipient to take away from it at the end. You need to clearly understand and clearly communicate the benefits of your service or product in a compelling way that clearly addresses the prospects’ business pressures.” Recent research, adds Jackson, indicates that the most common business pressures these days are ‘I want to save money,’ ‘I want to save time,’ and ‘I want more revenue.’
8. Define your goals. How will you define and measure your success — is it by the number of new leads, the value of the new business, or perhaps the quality of the contacts? “It is essential that you outline these requirements before any approaches are made to ensure there is no mismatch in expectation versus achievements,” says Jackson.
9. Approach, approach, approach. When it comes to the actual contact itself, Jackson notes, you need to ensure each time that you are building up the aforementioned story, adding new layers as you go. “With every phone call or e-mail, you need a message that adds to what you said previously, increasing your company’s credibility, building confidence, and therefore developing your relationship with the contact in question,” she says.
10. Have a backup plan. If things don’t look like they’re going your way, it’s time to wheel out the backup plan, says Jackson. “Lead generation is not an exact science; there are a number of tacks to try,” she observes.

Source: Management Today

Also coming next month: Post-License Monitoring and Support: Performance and Revenue Enhancement Strategies (and when all else fails, how to pull the plug and take back your IP!), Wednesday, December 16, 2009 ~ 1:00-2:30 pm (EST). CLICK here for details.

“Last spring, when we made the decision, there were [financial] issues (huge UC budget cuts have recently grabbed headlines), but the budget hadn’t quite slammed down to the extent it has since then,” Hanks says. “In our case, it wasn’t so much [us] wanting to leave Berkeley as wanting to come to U.T. Surprisingly, there’s more intellectual excitement and dynamism here. The department is growing and expanding, and we’re part of a cohort of new people, which is a fabulous feeling, fraught with potential.”

Source: The New York Times

The half-day event culminates with a “Lunch & Learn” just for the students. Faculty for the working lunch “include recent graduates who launched their businesses while they were here,” Nickson says. “They talk about the process and the resources they utilized; we try to do two or three presentations so the students can learn from more than one just one person.” Former Entrepalooza participants say they found the event helpful as they considered their careers as entrepreneurs. “Basically, it gave me the opportunity to hear a lot about different aspects of what’s involved in being an entrepreneur — from raising money to dealing with legal issues — and to see what that life is like,” says Merrill Guerra, MBA, the CEO and founder of Realkidzinc, an apparel firm targeting girls aged 5-12. Guerra has been both a participant and a presenter. “I do think it came in handy when we started up ‘real kidz,’” she says. “Entrepreneurs tend to have a group self-identity, and I got the feeling that these people were just as ‘crazy’ as I was, and that I was doing the right thing.” A detailed article on Entrepalooza appears in the November 2009 issue of Intellectual Property Marketing Advisor. For subscription information, CLICK HERE.

1. Brainstorm “What do we do best?” For this exercise, Hart suggests polling everyone in your organization. “You’ll be surprised at the variety of answers you get,” she says. If you’re finding that this question is drawing some blanks, she recommends asking the most basic question: What do we do?
2. Why did you start doing what you’re doing? “Chances are you saw a need in the market and decided to seize the opportunity,” Hart offers. “Did you think you could do it faster, cheaper, better than your competition?”
3. Ask your customers. They’ve already decided that you were the right choice, Hart notes, so ask them, ‘Why us?’ “Even better, this can be parlayed into a testimonial — two birds with one stone,” she observes.

Finally, Hart offers this ‘bonus’ tip: “Once you think you’ve got a decent UVP drafted, can you distill it down to a Tweet under 140 characters?”

Source: FutureNow

Within minutes, the US FDA Regulatory Calculator provides users with a potential FDA predicate, regulation product code, and the classification and regulatory pathway associated with a medical technology. With this new tool, you’ll save hours in initial research and eliminate the need for outside experts early in the process. Understanding the classification and regulatory pathway of new medical device technologies is critical to early business planning, market assessment, and understanding of FDA requirements. Typically, this takes in-house staff or outside consultants many research hours, can delay product development, and eats up additional time and money. The new tool puts regulatory pathway information at your fingertips early in the device development process, minimizing the potential for miscalculations with due diligence and helping to guide your commercialization and clinical trial strategy. For complete details, and to receive a $125 discount (E-News readers pay only $375), CLICK HERE.

As the title implies, the book is designed to show you how to get into the online marketing game and increase your online visibility and web traffic. Authored by Darren Barefoot and Julie Szabo, it details how to:

• Connect with potential customers and join their conversations
• Tweak your website to support your social media marketing campaigns
• Promote your products or brand and manage the toughest negative online feedback

While double entendres may not be entirely appropriate for your target audiences, don’t be afraid to think a bit out of the box when creating your next title: It may pay some surprising dividends.

Source: SitePoint

“I continue to be impressed by how dedicated these faculty members are to their research and the quality of their inventions,” says Rich Kordal, director of the OIPC. “The spirit of cooperation and innovation here at Louisiana Tech has led us to a disclosure rate that is higher than the national average.” Recipients included:

• Dr. Vir Phoha, professor of computer science, who has licensed his computer authentication software featuring technology that enhances computer system security by identifying specific user keystroke patterns.
• Dr. Yuri Lvov, professor of micro and nanosystems, who has licensed his drug delivery technology to Nemucore Medical Innovations. Lvov’s technology uses nanoencapsulation to control the release of drugs in a patient’s system.
• Dr. Erez Allouche, associate professor of civil engineering and research director of Tech’s Trenchless Technology Center, and Dr. Ray Sterling, professor emeritus of civil engineering, who were recognized for their work in advancing the commercialization of trenchless technology.

Among all of the achievements and accomplishments of these inventors, Kordal says Tech is most pleased to see that some of its previously licensed technologies are poised to enter the marketplace and to benefit the general public. “As we look toward the future, we are excited about the prospect of additional Louisiana Tech-based products being launched into the marketplace and the positive impact they will make on our society,” says Kordal.

Source: Genetic Engineering & Biotech News

What made Morris decide to employ incentives to encourage faculty grant proposals? “In my job, I have responsibility for all of our research efforts, as well as external funding — and the graduate programs,” he explains. “When you look at that job, one of the easy things to do, if you are so inclined, is to look at only the big opportunities. But a much better approach is to … make it so your whole team is incentivized and try to build a good infrastructure; you try to raise everybody’s boat.” Morris notes that more traditional means of encouraging grant funding are still being used, but getting researchers excited about generating research dollars is a great adjunct. “We wanted to bring up the culture of the university, and the overall enthusiasm to get people excited about going for the external [funding] and finding ways to reward them,” he explains. “If you want to have more proposals published, then you need to have more submitted.”

Morris has established three different incentive programs, each targeting different levels of grant funding. The first, most basic program, is called the SUBMIT program. It places funds into an account for “extramural-related” expenses of project directors and co-directors. Notices of available funds are processed on a monthly basis based on the previous month’s submissions. The second program, called RESUBMIT, is designed to encourage faculty to keep writing larger grant proposals. “Here, people getting $100,000 or $200,000 is considered a decent-sized grant,” Morris notes. “When you write something that large, it’s almost always to a federal agency, and one of the rubrics is that you have to submit the proposal two or three times before you get it to hit. So, I asked if we had a mechanism to encourage people to re-submit their proposals — and we didn’t have any.”

The RESUBMIT program funds up to $2,500 to support activities leading to a stronger resubmitted proposal. Those eligible for the program are faculty members who have recently been denied an external grant of at least $100,000, with a strong possibility of funding upon resubmission to the same agency. The third program, The Cardinal Fellows Program, offers support to investigators intent on seeking federal funding at the level of $200,000 or more in modified total direct costs — that is, the total direct costs minus equipment, tuition, and sub-award amounts over $25,000. A detailed article on the incentive programs appears in the November 2009 issue of Intellectual Property Marketing Advisor. For subscription information, CLICK HERE.

The process of discovering what customers do and do not want, he continues, must be overt in nature. “Implement a conscious process of documenting and testing your core business assumptions — with no selling and no proselytizing,” Cooper advises. He describes the process in three steps:

• State your assumptions: In other words, describe what you believe the need is that you will be filling.
• Find early adopters: Start small, using your network, family and friends.
• Test your assumptions: For example, find out what people would actually pay for the product or service

“Building a business will never be pure science; creativity and intuition are required to dream the big vision and solve immediate problems,” Cooper notes, “But businesses can benefit from applying sound processes to realizing the vision and preparing for inevitable problems. Processes such as proper marketing help mistakes from reoccurring and provide direction for pivoting from failures.”

Source: VentureBeat

InterTradeIreland Chief Executive Liam Nellis adds: “The theme of open innovation has a strong resonance with our own work in InterTradeIreland. Through our programs and initiatives, we are facilitating the development of an open innovation system across the island, North and South to deliver not only a more efficient use of the two jurisdictions’ knowledge resources, but also a more effective one as well.”

Source: IntertradeIreland

“First and foremost, the responsibility of marketing is to know what motivates people, and how they will react,” he continues. “Not knowing that professional photographers would certainly notice the increased traffic on their Flickr pages, and be upset about someone using their work without contacting them, is a fatal mistake.” No matter how big your organization, Joel concludes, it’s important to respect the property rights of others. “If you are unsure of what you can or cannot do, ask for help from a real expert,” he advises.

Source: Brand’s Anatomy

Payments: The number one fear for any merchant going global, says Davis, is getting paid. The good news, he says, is that “we are entering the golden age of innovative online payments, with payment services that can give you access to millions of customers in countries around the globe.” Currency exchange is built in, he adds. In short, says, Davis, “getting paid should be the least of your concerns.”

Language: Since English is the international language of commerce, says Davis, you should try your luck there first. “Do remember that for most customers, English is a second language, so keep the wording simple and straightforward and keep a look out for American expressions that won’t translate well,” he advises. In other words, don’t tell potential customers your product will “hit it out of the ball park.” Davis suggests using a good translation service to help with your international shipping policies and costs. “For many customers, a multi-language toggle is of great help,” he adds.

Select a test country: Identify your most promising country and make that a pilot project. “Doing so will give you a mini-course in global selling while keeping things relatively simple,” says Davis.

Duties and taxes: These vary by country. “Make sure that your customers are aware that duties and taxes are their responsibility,” Davis advises.

Customer service: Make certain you’ve stated your international policies clearly. “One of the biggest concerns for customers and vendors alike are return policies,” says Davis. “Be clear about who pays for what. International customers may also want to make sure that your company — being thousands of miles away — actually exists. So be especially responsive to international e-mail inquiries.” A small cadre of satisfied international customers can lead to good word of mouth, he adds, “And that needs no translation.”

Source: Entrepreneur.com

Indeed, money was on the minds of many of the innovators at the event. Furhman notes that his company, Medical Conservation Devices of Buffalo, has received a $900,000 grant from the National Institutes of Health for product development. But once it gets approval from the Food and Drug Administration, he will have to find more money to bring it to market. “We have a venture capital problem,” he concedes. “We would really like to develop this as a Western New York company.” Others saw the event more as a chance to mix, mingle and see what happens. “Just interacting with all the other folks from New York State who have displays here has been very useful, to find out the exciting things going on and how maybe we can network or work with them,” says Esther Sans Takeuchi, a UB engineering professor who recently won a National Medal of Technology and Innovation for her invention of the batteries used in many medical devices. During the event, dozens of congressional staffers milled about the Kennedy Caucus Room in the Senate Russell Building, checking out displays from Cornell University, Harris Corp., the Brookhaven National Laboratory and scores of other centers of innovation.

Source: The Buffalo News

The competition includes three categories:

• Invention and New Technology — For any business that utilizes science-based approaches to producing goods and services. The business “must have intellectual property associated with the concept or illustrate the potential for intellectual property to be associated with the concept,” according to the rules.
• Business – For any start-up or early-stage business and any existing business introducing a new product line or expansion project.
• Student – To compete in this new category, high school and college students can submit conceptual plans that meet the criteria of either of the first two categories in an effort to win scholarship awards.

“[The competition] shows WesBanco’s commitment to the businesses of southern Ohio, and the belief that good business plans help businesses to be more successful,” says Meagan Barnes, business development specialist at Ohio State University South Centers in Piketon, which is a title sponsor for the event. The top prize in the Innovation/New Technology category is $10,000, with $5,000 going to the Business winner and more than $5,000 in scholarships divided between two student winners.

Source: Chillicothe Gazette

“When we heard the G 20 summit was coming to Pittsburgh and the press was talking about the economic transformation of Pittsburgh from heavy industry to high-tech, we knew the media would be interested in our ‘Eds and Meds’ story,” says Maddy Ross, associate vice chancellor for national media at the University of Pittsburgh. In fact, she adds, that phrase was actually coined by The New York Times and other media outlets “because that transformation was heavily based on the power of our medical and educational institutions.” It was for those and other reasons that the media alert heralding the tours carried the headline: “Transforming Pittsburgh’s Economy: Carnegie Mellon, the University of Pittsburgh and UPMC Offer Technology and Science Tours to Media Covering the Pittsburgh Summit.”

“The University of Pittsburgh is considered one of the finest research institutions; right across the street is Carnegie Mellon; and UPMC, although it bears our name, is now a separate entity and is one of the finest — if not the finest — and largest medical campuses in the country,” says Ross. “We thought it would be helpful to the journalists who came to town to see what the Eds and Meds story looks like on the ground.” A detailed article on the media tours appears in the November 2009 issue of Intellectual Property Marketing Advisor. For subscription information, CLICK HERE.

Placement of your logo. Too many small business owners stress over what their logo should look like. In reality you need to stress over where you place it in your office, out of your office, online, at events, at others’ events, etc. Branding is a contact sport, so be sure to place your logo as often as possible.

What does your brand stand for? The Sternals refer to branding as that “off-the-record” conversation people have about your company when no one’s really looking. Hopefully you’ve done a good job cultivating your customer experience, because they’re the ones who talk about your brand when you’re not looking.

Invest in your customers for advertising. This doesn’t mean you buy your customers. Instead, nurturing customer service and the customer experience are among the most critical aspects of your branding efforts. Also, be sure to have an effective loyalty or rewards program. You want customers who rave about you and can’t wait to come back for more.

Don’t go global immediately. Yes, the Internet turns everyone into a global brand. But as a small business owner you need to own your own market first.

Speaking of going local… Participate in community events and hold your own as well. Ultimately you want people to see your logo and realize immediately who you are and what you stand for. By interacting with them at local events you will build a positive feeling about your organization.

Have a professional web presence. Whether it’s a website or blog, focus on having a professional look with plenty of opportunity to showcase your logo and branding.

Put your customers to work for you. Invest some money in giveaways like shirts, caps, visors, pencils, and other giveaways where you can display your logo and brand. People use these items more than you think.

Social media branding. By now you should be on social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn (depending on the focus of your customer). Many small business owners feel it’s important to use pictures of their face in their logo and avatar space, but this is prime real estate for your company’s logo and brand.

Source: Understanding Marketing

PLUS, it’s still not too late to register for two powerful audioconferences being held Wednesday and Thursday this week. CLICK HERE for details on Home Run Strategies: Finding, Nurturing, and Securing Maximum Revenues from Disruptive University Technologies, and CLICK HERE for information on Shifting Your TTO from Market Push to Market Pull: Finding the White Space.

One key factor in e-mail’s staying power as a marketing tool, he adds, is that it is — for the most part — private. “It’s fascinating to see many businesses or independent consultants using these public, online social networks for business,” he says. “Sure, they’re great to connect, but any interfacing between clients, private communications, company-specific content (like your intellectual property) is now a part of their system too. Not to be paranoid, or make you paranoid, but they do have the right to review that content and do with it what they will (like sell it to your competitors).”

Whether it’s for e-newsletters, Google Alerts, or quick notes from key business people or new business opportunities, “nothing beats e-mail,” says Joel. “Beyond the hundreds of RSS feeds and people that I am following on Twitter or keywords being tracked using TweetDeck, e-mail still inspires everything from articles to read and blogs to check out, to the latest news items to review and businesses opportunities to attack.”

Source: Twist Image

The licensed technology was created by Joseph Izatt, formerly on the biomedical engineering faculty at Case Western Reserve and now part of the biomedical engineering faculty at Duke, and Andrew Rollins, Warren E. Rupp associate professor of biomedical engineering at Case Western. Advances in functional FDOCT are expected to enhance the early diagnosis and treatment of several eye diseases, most notably diabetic retinopathy, which affects many of the 15 million Americans suffering from diabetes. The technology employs Color Doppler FDOCT for visualizing and quantifying blood flow and Spectroscopic FDOCT for imaging tissues and fluids. “Bioptigen is very pleased to extend its relationship with Case through this new technology agreement,” says Eric Buckland, director, president and chief executive officer of Bioptigen. “The intellectual property licensed by Case is fundamental to our ability to provide the highest performance FDOCT imaging system today and to develop new clinical tools that will dramatically extend the clinical value of FDOCT into the future.”

“As part of the licensing agreement, Case will become an equity partner in Bioptigen, further strengthening our relationship,” adds Michael Haag, director of biomedical licensing at Case.

Source: Optical Coherence Tomography News

Coming in December:

• Tech Transfer Partnerships: Establishing Effective Legal and Operational Structures for Long-Term Success, December 8th
• Post-License Monitoring and Support: Performance and Revenue Enhancement Strategies (And When All Else Fails, How to Pull the Plug and Take Back Your IP!), December 16th

The next Challenge will feature two independent “Idea-to-Product Competitions.” The first will focus on teams with innovative business ideas for sustainable energy utilizing advanced materials. The second, sponsored by the Department of Homeland Security Community and Regional Resilience Institute, will judge proposals focused on enhancing the ability to recover rapidly from natural and man-made disasters, also known as “community resilience.” The event will also include a Venture Showcase to highlight other entrepreneurial ventures in these spaces.

How does such an open competition enhance the marketing of the ORNL’s IP? “We offer IP from the ORNL as material around which students can form teams, or we allow them to use their own ideas,” Rogers explains. “A TTO may have some interesting IP; if they want, they can talk to the entrepreneurial part of our grad school and see if they’d like to put a team together.” The marketing effort is enhanced by several related events. “We do a poster session to allow some of our researchers to present their ideas in the same spaces the challenge covers,” Rogers says. “VCs tend to want to look at companies and international technologies, so we do a venture showcase of interesting young companies and technologies. This also allows the students to see presentations from real companies.” A detailed article on the Global Venture Challenge appears in the November 2009 issue of Intellectual Property Marketing Advisor. For subscription information, CLICK HERE.

The business plan first needs to discuss the products and services into which the IP will be integrated. It then must detail the benefits of these products and differentiate them from competitive products. When possible, include non-confidential drawings and backup materials. Your plan must also discuss how the benefits of the IP fulfill a large customer need. To accomplish this, the plan needs to detail customer wants and needs and prove that the company’s offerings specifically meet these needs.

The plan needs to discuss the marketplace and its size. The relevant market size equals the company’s sales if it were to capture 100% of its specific niche of the market.

Your business plan must also prove that your IP is better than competitive inventions. Listing no or few competitors has a negative connotation; it implies that there may not be a large enough market to support a company’s products or services. On the other hand, if there are too many competitors the market may be saturated. Any company that also serves the customer needs that you serve should be considered a competitor.

Detail both the positive and negative aspects of competitors’ IP and validate that your offerings are either superior in general or better at serving a specific customer niche.

As important as proving the quality of the IP and market size, the business plan must prove that the company can successfully execute on the opportunity. Detail your past accomplishments, including descriptions and dates when prior funding was received, products and services were launched, milestones reached, key partnerships executed, etc. If you are a “complete” start-up, and no milestones have been accomplished, the plan should focus on past accomplishments of the management team as an indicator of your ability to execute successfully.

Source: ExRussian

• Royalty Rates for Technology, 4th Edition reports more royalty rates, license fees and milestone payments than any other publication. We report the compensation terms for technology license agreements for: aeronautics, agriculture, automotive, chemistry, communications, computer hardware, computer software, construction equipment, electrical equipment, electronics, entertainment, food, franchises, glass, household products, Internet, mechanical devices, medical devices, photography, semiconductors, sports, steel, toys, and waste management.
• Royalty Rates for Pharmaceuticals & Biotechnology, 6th Edition reports royalty rates for an incredible range of compounds, manufacturing techniques, therapies and other pharmaceutical and biotechnology patented inventions. Just some of the technology categories covered include attention deficit disorder, Alzheimer’s detection, anti-inflammatory, antifungal, antiviral, arthritis, bone marrow production, cancer, cardiovascular, cartilage regeneration, chromosome analysis, cold remedies, contraception, cystic fibrosis, dermatology, diabetes, drug delivery, gene alteration, hepatitis, HIV, humanized antibodies, monoclonal antibodies, neurological, pain therapy, personal care, psychotherapy, research processes, sleep therapy, stem cells, transdermal drug delivery, and vaccines. The parties are identified, the technology is described and all of the financial terms available are reported including royalty rates, license fees and milestone payments.
• Royalty Rates for Trademarks & Copyrights, 3rd Edition reports royalty rates and transaction values for trademarks and copyrights for the period 1990 through 2004. Industries covered include: airline, apparel, architecture, art, autos, boats, celebrities, communications, corporate names, electronics, food & beverage, franchises, furniture, general merchandise, internet domain names, medical, movies, music, party goods, restaurants & hotels, sports toys, and university names. Also included is a new section describing financial methods for royalty rate development.

In recent years, according to the AUTM annual survey, UMass has ranked among the Top 15 nationwide in IP income of reporting institutions. “Research and discovery are crucial to the Commonwealth’s innovation economy and will drive economic renewal and recovery in this state and across the nation,” says university President Jack Wilson.

Source: Innovation @ UMB

Source: Crain’s Detroit Business (registration required)