The current budgetary and economic crises facing the United States mandates that we must maximize the impact of technology transfer in both the public and private sectors if we are to remain competitive in the 21st century. This is a topic that President Obama has outlined in a recent Presidential Policy Memoranda addressed to the federal laboratory system, and in the Administration challenge for our research universities to commit themselves to fully support commercializing technologies they create using taxpayer dollars.
With billions of dollars invested in R&D at stake, improving the end-to-end management of technology is of critical importance to global political leaders. At present, more than $60B is spent annually on university and federally supported intramural and extramural research in the U.S.
Yet identifying how to improve technology transfer output and outcomes on a consistent and predicable basis remains an ongoing challenge with little consensus on best practices. Unfortunately, most of the recommendations provided do little to address these underlying problems. To find a way out of the thicket, we need to step back and determine exactly what it is that we’re trying to do. Merely running faster if you’re going in circles isn’t productive, just exhausting and discouraging. We need to make sure that we are aligning our measurements of success with our ultimate goal.
While working with some of the world’s leading companies and universities, we’ve had the fortune to associate with top tier technology transfer professionals, thus gaining insight into best practices in the field. These people are unbelievably smart! They regularly seek to have unparalleled performance; constantly looking to identify new management frameworks to raise their productivity to new levels of efficiency, effectiveness and, ultimately, impact. Yet performance management is one of the key areas that remain one of the most difficult for leaders to address. This is not surprising given the gamut of different approaches that have been created over the years.
