This Partnerships for Innovation (PFI) project will support a package to licensees to significantly reduce the risk of commercialization. The package consists of an initial working prototype, business or marketing plans, and the requisite IP for market entry. This work will be done through the creation of Venture Enhancement Teams (VETs) implemented within the University's recently created multidisciplinary capstone design program. The project provides for expanding the Triage Team (the members of VETs from outside of the University) to 5 to 10 members to accommodate responsibilities for selection of projects with risk profiles to be enhanced through prototype development, additional practical business planning, and IP collaboration. The goal by the end of the grant period is for Venture Enhancement Teams to become an established and essential element of Louisiana Tech's technology transfer infrastructure, and a driving force behind the innovation enterprise of north Louisiana. The inventive and replicable approach to IP commercialization in this project will engage academic researchers, students, and outside partners in a common enterprise. It will enhance the commercial potential of academic research and accelerate its transformation into private economic activity. It will employ a novel approach to acceleration of technologies from academic research to viable businesses through the identification, specification, and development of requisite prototypes, business plans, marketing plans, SBIR proposals, complementary IP, and seed capital with the involvement of a broad range of university personnel and business partners.
Building upon a previous PFI award, 0332461, this project will take the previous work to a new level by offering a package to reduce the risk of commercialization. In the long term, the project will generate new wealth in the regional economy of north Louisiana by increasing technology transfer. The innovations in emerging technologies will support areas of the economy such as medicine and healthcare, homeland security and national defense, manufacturing and chemical processing, and others that are essential to the improvement of the national well-being. In addition, the preparation of deliverables by the Venture Enhancement Teams is experiential education available few places in the world. The project will broaden the training of future leaders in technology research, development, and commercialization through direct student engagement with University IP and technology transfer. The project will advance the understanding of students and faculty as to the importance and role of commercialization, while at the same time it will promote teaching, training, and learning of the specific technical, marketing, and business elements of the process. Partners include Louisiana Tech University (lead institution), and Triage Team members (with their institutions): Bob Tucker, Jones Walker Law Firm; Bob Mehalso, Microtec Associates; Mike Marcantel, Owen Biosciences; Ross Barrett, Louisiana Ventures; Joe Lovett, Louisiana Fund 1; Chris Mangum, Century tel; Paul Campbell, DFJ Mercury Venture Partners and AsterBio; Justin Boland, Artimen Ventures; John Buske, Regional Innovators Network; Roy Keller, Louisiana Business & Technology Center.
The overall goal of the Partnerships for Innovation project was to significantly accelerate the commercialization of Louisiana Tech University’s Intellectual Property and to focus the economic development impact on the I-20 corridor in North Louisiana. Building upon the institution’s first project that established a process for identifying viable market opportunities for intellectual property, this second project established a process to make the technology transfer opportunity more attractive and successful commercialization more likely. Through close integration with the University’s research operations, innovative interdisciplinary academic programs, and strategic innovation and entrepreneurship infrastructure, this grant established a pipeline for technology commercialization that is transforming the region. The project employed a novel approach to commercialization that engaged academic researchers, students and external partners together in a common enterprise. Multidisciplinary teams of students, faculty and mentors serve as the catalysts for innovation through academic entrepreneurship courses in Innovative Venture Research and Venture Enhancement Teams. Students explore commercial opportunities of selected university inventions and present results to a triage team venture capital, technology commercialization and business experts who recommend actions for technology transfer. The triage team recommends projects whose risk profile would be enhanced through prototype development and additional practical business planning. Student teams are supplied with the resources needed and are assigned to create a specific product prototype based on a technology previously researched in the IVR course or otherwise recommended for commercialization. Students are supervised by course instructors, research faculty inventors and community mentors. The impacts of the project are significant in training future leaders in technology research, development and commercialization. More than 80 undergraduate and graduate students and 25 faculty members have participated in approximately 30 technology commercialization projects. Participants have included engineering and business majors with the largest percentage coming from the University’s new Nanosystems Engineering program. To date, thirteen of the program alumni have continued to be involved in new business ventures and 27 alumni have continued to graduate school. The close interaction between faculty and students in these projects has fostered strong interests in research, innovation and entrepreneurship.
