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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!

“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.

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HTC Diamond was released in May 2008, and was originally produced only in black.

The HTC Touch Diamond has a cool 3D interface and a beautiful touch screen. The Windows Mobile 6.1 smartphone also offers Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS, and a 3.2-megapixel camera.

The smartphone is that much more stunning in person with its sleek mirrored face and the prism effect on the back. It’s also smaller than we originally thought at just 4 inches tall by 2 inches wide by 0.4 inch deep and 3.8 ounces, so you certainly won’t have any problems slipping this compact handset into a pants pocket.

The smartphone is outfitted with a gorgeous 2.8-inch, 680×480 pixel resolution touch screen. While this is all well and good, we think it may be the new TouchFLO 3D interface that really catches your eye. It builds on the TouchFLO interface that was first introduced on the HTC Touch, but the look and feel is completely different.

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