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There is no doubt that these are tough economic times. Unemployment is high and credit is tight. Key indicates show that is the worse economy in a generation. Many technology transfer offices have seen potential business partners reduce their innovation portfolios and expenditures. This coupled with a reduction in funding sources, from grants and investors to university sources are blowing the technology transfer research commercialization efforts into the perfect storm.

There are difficulties and challenges, but these times also create opportunities. Here are seven tips to help your technology transfer office succeed in these tough economic times.

1. Maintain a list of problems that are relevant to the research and technologies in the pipeline.

Technology transfer offices typically get involved in research commercialization efforts late in the research and testing process. Get involved earlier in the process and start developing a list of problems of which the research can be applied.

This is really an early brainstorming exercise. Don’t just talk to the researchers. Get business input from those who are not involved with the research or the research teams. Independent ideas can be worth their weight in gold.

2. Develop long-term business relationships.

“Dig the well before you are thirsty.”

-Chinese Proverb

Start developing business relationships with business leaders from a wide range of industries. Do this even before you have any applicable research or solutions for them. These relationships will pay off in two ways.

? You will have a better understanding of the types of challenges that these businesses face.

? When you do have promising research technologies and solutions you already have a relationship with the business or their contacts.

3. Pair researchers with business mentors.

Researchers think like researchers. Business people think like business people. 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. This continuous conduit will go a lot further than a long forgotten entrepreneurial seminar.

4. Develop alternative commercialization strategies early.

Good business people know that there is always a chance that their efforts may fail. Technology transfer officers know this too. Unfortunately, many researchers and inventors do not think about this, much less plan for it.

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 spin offs and startups will fail. You, can as the technology transfer officer can improve these odds.

I sit on the advisory board for some start up focused investment funds. One of the strategies that we have developed recently is to go for the big distribution partnering deal with large companies. 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.

5. Reduce risks for all involved.

It wasn’t that long ago that many universities shunned the entire technology transfer process. They wanted their faculty teaching and doing research, not commercializing their intellectual property. My, how times have changed.

Now universities love the revenue that comes from royalties and equity distributions and sales that are associated with intellectual property commercialization. Businesses are always looking for a competitive advantage and right now innovation is the soup de jour, except for one thing …RISK!

In order to get more businesses interested in potential technology look for new ways to reduce their potential risks. 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 3 years”.

This approach allows the business to conserve cash today and the university to reap more money in the long run. It’s better than the technology sitting on the shelf waiting to become obsolete.

6. Teach bootstrapping to your startups.

All technology startups need money. That is a known fact. The truth is that many could get by with less money than they think that they need. There in lies the art of bootstrapping. Bootstrapping basically means to start and operate a business without lots of investment funds. 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. It takes a special entrepreneur to be able to successfully bootstrap a business.

Help your lead researchers and startup teams. Get some experienced bootstrappers on your advisory and consulting teams and pass the knowledge on to your startups.

7. Partner with other technology transfer offices.

Technology transfer offices provide a valuable service to both the university and their research communities. They play a vital role in the economic development of their respective communities and states. Unlike many organizations involved in the invention commercialization process they do not compete.

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.

Partnering with other technology transfer offices offers many unique benefits that cannot be found though other means. It opens up dialogue and support for represented research and technologies to new areas and new commercialization ideas. It develops relationships with other potential business partners and fosters potential research synergies.

Targeted TTO partnerships can lead to specific research pairing with higher degrees of commercialization potential. This focused effort will, in the long run, yield a high degree of return on investment.

These 7 technology transfer officer tips can help you reduce your operating costs and increase your revenue generation success rate. It’s a win for society, the researcher, the business community, the university, and YOU!

Given the advances of the past couple decades, ice fishing equipment has come a long way.  Gone are the days of freezing your tail off, hunched over a hole with a rod cut from a summer pole attempting to catch fish through a hole in the ice.  Today’s equipment allows for unprecedented mobility as well as great comfort to allow for longer and more successful trips to the ice.  Below is a list of the top 10 things that you can get to make your time on the ice more productive and enjoyable.

    10) Ice Fishing Plastics   

Today’s plastics are revolutionary in that they at times catch more fish than live bait.  This normally comes from their scent and durability.  Using one piece of Berkley Powerbait to catch a dozen fish is not uncommon.

    9) Wheel House

Gone are the days of 3 hours to move your permanent ice house.  With a wheel house you can jack it back up, hook it up to the truck and move on down to your next ice fishing destination.  A great way to cover more ice and not dread moving from a hot spot that has gone south.

    8) Glow Jigs

Perfect for those low light times or when fishing water that is murky, many of today’s jigs come with glow paint on them that often increases catch rates immensely.  Popular models include the Lindy Frostee and the Genz Bug.  Simply place the jig next to a light source, preferably an LED light source, and your jig will illuminate very bright to draw in the fish.

    7 Underwater Ice Fishing Camera

Nothing has increased people’s understanding of the underwater world more than this piece of equipment.  The underwater camera allows you to watch everything that is going on beneath the ice on a TV screen.  It allows you to use minor adjustments to coax more fish into biting your bait.

    6) GPS with Lake Contour Software

The advent of the GPS allowed for people to bring high technology with them wherever they went.  Couple that with lake contour software, and we can go directly to the structure we see on our GPS.  This saves unknown time finding new spots as well as pinpointing the exact spot that was successful in the past.  Lakemaster makes excellent contour software for Garmin and Lowrance devices.

    5) Modern Ice Fishing Rod

Today’s ice fishing rods are built specifically for high performance ice fishing.  With a spine that allows one to play the fish as they fight, these rods are far superior than the rods of yesteryear.  You can even tailor the action of the rod to fit the fishing you are doing from ultra light for panfish to a heavy duty ice rod for northern pike. 

    4) Portable Propane Heater

Nothing is worse than being cold while a hot bite is on.  The beauty of today’s heaters is both their portability as well as their heat output.  Some models are even safe indoors, and are great for heating up your portable or permanent shelter.  Mr. Heater and Coleman are the major brands in this space and both produce excellent heaters to keep you on warm and content on the ice.

    3) Portable Ice Fishing Shelter

Lightweight and extremely portable, the tent-like ice shelters you can purchase today allow for comfort, style and charm all while providing you opportunity to follow the hot bite.  The shelters go up and come down quickly and really keep the elements at bay.  Clam, Eskimo and Eastman all produce a high quality portable ice shanty for your ice fishing needs.

    2) Gas Powered Ice Auger

Today’s ice angler is all about moving to keep on the hot bite.  Couple that mentality with an ultra sharp gas powered ice auger of today and you can make swiss cheese of any lake you are on.  By punching many holes before you start fishing you can move at will and not spook the fish if they have moved slightly in one direction.  You will find high quality models from Strikemaster, Jiffy, and Eskimo to quench your thirst for catching more fish.

  1) Ice Fishing Flasher

 Perhaps no tool is more powerful than the ice fishing flasher.  Allowing the fisherman to see the entire water column as well as their bait leads to more fish on the ice.  Utilizing a flasher combined with the many holes you punched with your ice auger you can move quickly if no fish are below a hole.  With varying colors to mark how big an object below the flasher is, you can see when a fish rises to take your bait.  They are invaluable when fishing for suspended fish like crappies which would otherwise be overlooked.

With all the technology and innovation afforded to ice fishermen today there is no reason catching more fish needs to be a pipe dream.  If you combine even 3 of the items listed above you will greatly increase your chances are catching more and bigger fish.

“Today we are Mobile”. So Simple and so Smart phrase. People who are not having even a savings account in a bank or even a credit card, one can find a mobile handset with them. World has seen so many innovations both Technical and Business, but if we club these two together I’m sure it will be a real hard job to find out a faster and smarter innovative example beyond the word called “Mobility”. It’s just awesome. This specific segment has shown tremendous growth in both Technology and Marketing innovation and in this small article I’m trying to inscribe the most important Technology Innovations in a chronological way.

A. Pre-Cellular Era: In 1895, Marconi transmitted wireless signals and it gave birth of radio. Till the end of World War I, wireless innovation took place in AM (Amplitude Modulation) technology. Then FM (Frequency Modulation) came to the picture. Till the end of World War II , the technical development in the field of radio and other wireless technologies were done by Government bodies , in different countries. But the birth of “cellular” concept came just after the innovation of “Integrated Circuits”.

B. The 1G Era: Analog Cellular: Based on Analog Transmission ; launched in early ‘80s, the 1G networks were for voice communication. The basic concepts came from two key standards, (i) the Nordic NMT and, (ii) the US AMPS. In late ‘80s, when 1G took its own pace, different standards started getting popularity in different regions, for example, NTT’s proprietary standard in Japan, US AMPS in North America, the British Standard (a derivative of US Standard) in Western Europe and NMT standards in Scandinavian countries.

C. The 2G Era: Digital Cellular: In early ‘90s GSM became mandatory in Europe and it was done by the European Commission. Regional wireless leaders specifically the Nordic vendors Ericsson and Nokia and a couple of another operators held the major market share. Not only they became popular in their respective countries but in a very short span of time, they became Global Giants. And the impact became very strong in late ‘90s, only in Western Europe GSM caught almost 35% of the worldwide market. In US and APAC, the same thing happened, that was a huge business growth. By the year 2000, in APAC, GSM held almost 60% of the regional market.

D. The 3G Era: Multimedia Cellular: After the superb success of 2G Standards, it got a world wide demand for Data Traffic also, along with the Voice Traffic. But initially the basic target was to get a uniform platform for that. Here the European GSM got a tough challenge from US based Qualcomm’s CDMA technology. Now all the mobile handset manufacturers got two options, either GSM or CDMA and ultimately the adoption became absolutely regional. The first adoption of 3G could not bring that pace as it was expected the transition from Voice to Data. In Japan , the local leader NTT Do-Co-Mo did the Data Transition in 1999 in their own way.

E. The 4G Era: Towards Wireless Broadband: From 1G to 2G and then 3G, the basic intention of all the carriers was to improve and increase the spectrum capacity. Now when we talk or think beyond 3G, it’s really very difficult to comment on the 4G standards today. We can only say that the major players in the market are putting their huge efforts to build the base. For example, the technologies like Wi-Fi , WiMax , UWP, ZigBee , Mobile-Fi are nothing but the building blocks for a super powered , never seen Mobile Broadband revolution. The major careers have put endless endeavors to develop 4G, but according to industry specialists, 4G Ear shall be seen after 2010.