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Have no defined policy or procedure at all on commercializing
university technology. Defining the groundrules, requirements,
and procedures could cause a lot of debate and disagreement.
Allow faculty members to
be creative. (The university’s
rights and responsibilities can always be figured out later if
you need to.)
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If you have a technology policy and a procedure, make sure
nobody in the university community actually understands what
it is. Complexity is good.
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If you have a technology policy and a procedure, allow word
to get around campus that the department heads, academic
senate, and/or administration view the commercialization of
university-generated technology as not quite in keeping with
the university's academic mission.
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If you have a technology policy and a procedure, apply them
inconsistently. Nobody's going to notice if certain
researchers or other participants seem to get a "good deal"
while others seem to have a far tougher time of it. If you
are the Licensing Officer, amuse yourself with your ability
to influence what happens. Be arbitrary. Or sometimes you
can have fun simply by dragging your feet. Most people will
get fatigued and turn their attention to less arduous tasks.
(Besides, this "window of opportunity" stuff probably
doesn't mean too much anyway.)
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If you have a technology policy and a procedure, they should
not be equitable. An equitable
commercialization policy typically will allocate equal
shares from successful technology commercialization (1) to
the faculty researcher(s), (2) to the department of the
researcher(s), and (3) to the university. Cutting out one or
two of these entities entirely — or, alternatively, severely
restricting any benefit that might go to the faculty
researcher(s) — is usually enough to prevent any type of
ongoing program at your university.
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Limit the licensing of university technology to large
companies only. Although young
entrepreneurial companies are generally more flexible,
more innovative in their thinking, have vastly lower costs
of operation, and far greater incentives to make a novel
technology work in the marketplace, young companies are
fragile entities that will almost surely require greater
attention if they are to survive long enough to stand any
chance of succeeding. The fact that the potential pay-off
from a start-up can be enormous should not influence your
university's thinking. Stick with licensing to large
established companies because the record demonstrates that
large companies always succeed.
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Find a single out-licensing model and stick with it for all
situations. The process for licensing medical technology or
biotech is familiar enough to most university licensing
offices. Why not simply apply this same approach to
commercializing technology from your engineering schools
(all of them), to university generated software, and to your
business school (just kidding, of course; nothing coming out
of your business school could possibly be the basis for
launching a new company because it isn't technology,
right?).
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Don't bother with understanding "market-based" royalty
rates, third-party working relationships, or generally
observed business Terms and Conditions. You are the
University. If you deign to mess around with
commercialization at all, then you will damn well call the
tune. If your potential collaborators don't want to
collaborate as you dictate, you probably wouldn't have
wanted to get involved with them anyway.
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Do not allocate university resources to pay for stuff like
intellectual property protection,
market analysis, writing a
business plan, or getting knowledgeable individuals
involved either as advisors or as paid professional
consultants. Especially don't do this up front. It won't add
value to your deal. This stuff is all window dressing
anyway. Who needs it!
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Never allow researchers from other schools who have made it
big as founders of successful young companies to visit your
campus. Or, if they do visit, make sure that they don't
actually talk to your faculty members. Why seek trouble? Who
knows what strange tales might be told.
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Keep those folks in your business school away from the
researchers in your science faculty, the staff of your
engineering schools, and anybody in your university's
hospital. Gosh, imagine what a mess it could be if they each
had part of a powerful commercialization idea?
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Never, never develop relationships between your university
and
private investors,
venture capitalists, consultants, or lawyers and
accountants who are involved in real-world deal-flow.
Speaking engagements are a no-no.
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If an entrepreneur-wannabe from your faculty somehow gets
through the previous 12 barriers, make sure that he or she
cannot get time freed up to work as an employee, a
consultant, or a founder involved with a start-up. Keep 'em
in the classroom where they belong. After all, what could
possibly be learned in a start-up technology company? (And
that goes double for students.)
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OK, if somehow all your planning fails and someone somehow
creates a company, makes it wildly successful and either
sells it for a big pay-off or takes it through an
astronomical IPO, do everything in your power not to allow
them back on campus to talk about it. If the word ever got
around, somebody else might actually try to do it with their
promising new technology. And then, you'd just never be able
to stop it.
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Some time after the university accepts equity in return for
licensing technology into a promising young company, make
sure that the local paper writes an article questioning the
propriety of licensing technology in exchange for equity
rather than for a royalty (after all, it's simply not
traditional, is it?!).
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Establish an unofficial (but inviolate) rule that any
equity-based licensing of university technology must go
through an intermediary who will control the terms of the
deal (and who just happens to be an alumnus and long-term
donor and who, magically, will always seem to end up with an
equity piece of each such company).
