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Category Archives: Technology Transfer Offices

Where TTO Technology Listings Fail

Leave a Comment Posted by on January 3, 2012

By Katie Young Morris and Naoufel Testaouni

As project scouts for TandemLaunch, we are looking at University tech transfer websites on a regular basis.  When we saw Jeff Fearn’s advice for TTO’s to make more information available on their websites, we decided to take it a step further and highlight the common ways that website licensing listings fail to connect the right people to the right licensing opportunities.

1. Make your search results as user friendly as possible.  Step one is to make sure that your titles are clear.  Step two is to take advantage of the power of a one sentence summary description that appears with your title in the search results. While not always needed, this additional information makes it easier for people to get to the technologies they have interest in more quickly and efficiently, without overlooking technologies that do not immediately appear relevant.  Search providers like Google do this for exactly the same reason: titles don’t always give enough information.  You can further optimize the functionality of your searches by making sure that the text following each title gives as clear a picture of what the technology does as possible.

The University of British Columbia TTO’s site provides a great example of this in action:

2. Don’t tell us your technology is ‘new’.  Tell us why.  Don’t worry, we know your technology is unique, novel, new, fast, superior, just plain better than other solutions. The most important information individuals need to evaluate a technology are the concrete results that can be compared to similar solutions. Provide comparisons to similar technologies when possible. This specificity will make your opportunity descriptions more meaningful and attention grabbing.

If you indicate that the invention improves efficiency, indicate ‘by how much’. We have given an example from Queen’s University’s PARTEQ Innovation below.

Better yet?  Provide image, video, or audio results. Yissum Technology Transfer (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem), for example, makes these kind of demonstration materials nearly the first thing that appears in their summaries.

 

The bottom line is that nothing will sell a technology better than results. For unfamiliar technologies, a brief video demonstrating how the technology functions will make a big difference in communicating what an opportunity is all about (costly video production is not required).

3. Important, but often forgotten information: Most university TTOs understand the importance of clearly labeling, categorizing, and describing their technologies, including listing potential applications, advantages and the problem solved (do all of these things).  Some specifics that are often missing and should strengthen your sales case are:

  • Patent numbers and types – These provide more detailed information on the technology and the scope of its protection.
  • Patent filing dates – These place the technology in the timeline of related technologies.
  • Publications – These provide more detailed information on a technology and future development.
  • Inventors’ names – A quick search on an inventor can help give a sense of the inventors’ availability, similar work they are doing that may be of interest, and additional relevant publications.

Companies that are going to license your technology will need this information before making a decision.  If you don’t have ready access to this information, consider revising your university’s disclosure or patent management process to ensure it is at your fingertips in the future.   The University of Rochester Center for Entrepreneurship is an example of a TTO that is doing a good job of providing this information.

Even better, use some of the extra time you saved by reducing unnecessary inquiries, and provide direct links.

4. Differentiate investment types. A technology status description is a powerful way to help the right kind of investor tune into your technology.  Some individuals and companies will be interested in early stage technologies, others will want some kind of proof of concept, and others will be interested in fully developed technologies.  UChicago Tech has one of the best methods we have seen to quickly summarize a technology’s development status.

5. Stop gatekeeping.  While TTOs need to be sensitive to what information should be kept confidential at different stages of a technology’s development, gatekeeping for any other reason is a waste of your time.  Some TTOs provide very scant information about their technologies. Our best guesses as to why are that they lack time, want to track interest in specific technologies, or want to get the opportunity to pitch certain technologies.  But if you don’t provide enough information about your technology, anyone who contacts you about it will not have a clear picture of what their interest in the technology is.  That means wasted time with people who are not going to license a technology anyway, and a distorted picture of what interest there really is in a technology. You also risk missing out on people who might be interested in an opportunity, but never discover it is available.

Look at the recurrent questions you are fielding and consider systematically answering those questions on your website .  If you can provide the information in response to a technology inquiry, there is likely no reason not to have it available online.  The minimal upfront time invested will save you the time of answering requests from people who only have a vague sense that a technology might be of interest, freeing you up to invest more time in relationships where there is concrete interest.

Technology Transfer, Technology Transfer Offices , ,

5 Tips for Venture Investing in University Inventions

18 Comments Posted by on August 25, 2011

Investing in university ventures is difficult but worthwhile. The following are a few things to consider when you are negotiating investment deals with universities. All of this comes from my own experience and might not reflect the engagement with your particular university.

1. Know who you are engaging

University Technology Transfer Officers (TTOs) are neither entrepreneurs nor lawyers (the two common contacts for a traditional venture investor). They are a curious mix between business developer without strong incentives and legal administrator without formal background. Your common TTO has a technical PhD (university value system at work) and very little off-campus work experience.

Add a high turn-over and a low frequency of equity deals per TTO, and you get significant knowledge variability. Some TTOs are exceptionally well versed operators, while others need an explanation of basic terminology (e.g. “vesting”). Of course both types usually share the same generic TTO title.

Try to physically meet your TTO counterpart early on to get a sense of their experience. Make sure that you carefully explain terminology of your world. Ask them to return the favour and carefully explain the university context to you. Universities have their own culture and vocabulary when it comes to commercialisation. The more you normalize your language, the better your chances of closing a deal.

2. Licensee vs. Investor

It is truly unfortunate that most university investment deals are considered a “license”. For a traditional license the TTO is usually approached by companies that have established an internal need for a certain technology and would like to procure it. The licensee wants something and the TTO has it.

The inverse is true in the venture world where it is the entrepreneur who wants the money and the investor who has it. Even in today’s frothy market, entrepreneurs pitch to VCs, write business plans, travel to partner meetings, etc. University inventors don’t pitch (or do any of the other things that you would normally expect as an Angel or venture investor). Instead, they often genuinely believe that they are doing you a favour by taking your money. Don’t get offended when this happens. It’s a consequence of their (sheltered) reality and not intended as a negotiation stance.

3. Charter vs. Folklore

Universities have a lot of fundamental charter constraints. These are unavoidable and as an investor you just need to learn to live with them. But universities also have a lot of folklore that at first glance appear like charter issues. A classic example would be the often-quoted Bayh-Dole Act in the US: “We cannot sell the technology [Charter: Bayh-Dole prohibits assignment] so we need an ongoing royalty [Folklore: Bayh-Dole makes no provision whatsoever about payment modality]”.

Understanding these differences can be critical for business decisions (e.g. the inability to collect a lump sum payout would scuttle most venture investment deals for technologies with long times to market whereas the inability to assign wouldn’t be a deal killer for the same investor). Beyond studying policy, your best bet is to ask the TTO to provide not just the “rules” but also the reasons behind them.

 4. Risk is Anathema  

University inventors aren’t just risk-averse. They don’t just assess risk and then decide against taking it – they often genuinely don’t understand the concept of risk. This usually pops up during the valuation process. Inventors, and to some degree TTOs, tend to over-value ideas. On the flip side, they tend to under-value human contributions. I have had TTOs question why we would allocate equity to (low or unpaid) employees of the venture at all.

 De-coupling past from future is your best bet for crossing this chasm. The past is sunk cost. The value of the invention has nothing whatsoever to do with the (government) money spent to get there and everything to do with the commercial opportunity going forward. You should therefore make a distinction between those inventors who will make substantial operational contributions post-founding and those that won’t. The latter will be adequately provided for by the university portion of the deal. The former should be treated as founder. Simply ignore the fact that they will also receive some proceeds through the university channel. Mixing up these two types will give you nothing but grief.

 5. Don’t Screw Them

It’s so easy. Universities are early (common) shareholders; they don’t have a voice in the company; their value contribution is mostly made already (IP injection); and they usually don’t fight back. It would be so easy to squeeze them just a bit more out of the cap table. Fight.That.Thought!

Every time that an investor or entrepreneur screws a university, it becomes part of the global university folklore. Universities and their Tech Transfer Office are like a hive mind. I recently had a TTO tell me straight-faced that “we always get diluted to nothing in equity deals” – at a university that has never actually done an equity deal. Hive mind.

Their concern is real and they get screwed often enough. But everybody who screws them a bit makes life massively harder for hundreds of upstanding investors and entrepreneurs. You are poisoning the well in the backyard. Don’t do it.

Technology Transfer Offices , ,

10 Tips for Student Entrepreneurs

5 Comments Posted by on February 15, 2011

Starting your own company out of university is a tricky business. You tend to have other things on your mind – like getting your degree. Here are some practical tips for university students who want to commercialise their technology.

1. Write Everything Down: Most university ventures are formed around intellectual property so you need to make that foundation as strong as possible. It is nearly impossible to retro-actively “clean up” your patents. Keep good lab books, use books with numbered pages and get your supervisor to sign your books every month or so. Keep your emails, time-stamp documents and use good backup policies for digital data. The US still uses a “first to invent” framework for patent priority. While your start-up is unlikely to engage in the legal wrangle known as interference, your future acquirer or licensees will be much more comfortable with a well-developed history (and comfort translates directly into dollars).

2. File Disclosures: Get into the habit of writing a short invention disclosure BEFORE you write your papers. In fact, I recommend that you write the invention disclosure as soon as you have clarity about your research path. They are free and don’t take long. Frequent disclosure writing will give you a good case history for your inventions but, more importantly, it gets you into the habit of thinking about invention as deliberate acts in your university life.

3. Talk to your Tech Transfer Office: Your Tech Transfer Office can help you manoeuvre through a lot of the early challenges. And they (usually) do it for free. Establish a relationship with the relevant tech transfer officer and keep in regular contact. They love hearing from students so don’t feel like you are intruding.

4. Don’t rely on your Tech Transfer Office: While a great sounding board, the Tech Transfer Office isn’t going to build your business for you. They can’t (no money, no staff, no risk capability). Every university has dozens if not hundreds of inventions where the inventors are just waiting for the Tech Transfer Office to “make it happen”. It won’t, until you get out there and build the business.

5. Leverage your Supervisor(s): For probably the last time in your career you are surrounded by world-class scientists who will help you for free. Beyond the obvious assistance with technical issues, you can ask them for advice on your business plan, for funding options, and even for networking suggestions. They will likely know a lot more potential investors, collaborators and business partners than you. Even a professor without any start-up experience will add credibility to your venture, especially for non-venture funding (e.g. commercialisation grants).

6. Network on Campus: Reach out across campus for other professors in related fields, other graduate students and anybody else who might be helpful. Most high value innovation comes from the overlap of problems and solutions form different technical fields. Try to find collaborators in different departments who can help you with specific problems but also broaden the scope of your project. For example, I started in the Physics department but early on set up collaborations with Computer Science for much of the core algorithm development.

7. Network off Campus: It might feel like it, but you really aren’t the first student to launch a company. Lots of people have done it before or contributed to new start-ups via funding, mentorship or executive work. But you will almost never find them on campus. This is one of the inherent problems of university spin-outs: Success implies departure. So you have to get out into the broader community and build relationships. Try to especially find those university entrepreneurs who have come before you but are still accessible enough to be of immediate help to you. Meet-Ups and entrepreneurship events are a good start for this, but ultimately nothing beats asking your Tech Transfer Office for past spin-outs and contacting the corresponding CEOs directly. Play the alumni angle for all it is worth!

8. Get Start-Up Grants: Canada offers some great ways to seed-fund your early commercial activities without giving away equity. Many of these options are tied to universities (e.g. the I2I program provides funding for university-industry pre-commercial collaboration). At BrightSide we raised in the neighbourhood of $6M in equity financing (over many rounds). Effectively matching this was another $5M in various grants and credits – many of which were only made possible through our close collaboration with universities. Not only is this free money, it can greatly reduce the cost of venture money later on.

9. Learn to be a Leader: Creating your own company will challenge your leadership skills. The university environment is a great place to practice those skills in relative safety. Don’t fall into the trap of becoming the lonely grad student at the bottom of the hierarchy. At the very least get some undergraduate students into your project and function as their supervisor. This will require some coordination with your professor but is well worth the effort. Those students are also a great source for initial hires into your start-up once you leave campus.

10. Start Now, Don’t Wait: More important than everything else, start now! Don’t wait until your degree is comfortably completed. Get out there, start a business and push forward. Set up a company, even if it is just a shell early on. Aside from immediate benefits such as tax credits (if you set up your employment with the company properly), this will force you to reach out to the world. Go out, learn about the market and then push your research efforts into the right direction. The faster and earlier you can start this iteration, the more value you will get out of your graduate research when you finally switch it into your start-up.

Entrepreneurship, Spin-Off vs Start-Up, Technology Transfer Offices , , , ,

Stubborn University Terms

3 Comments Posted by on November 30, 2010

Dealing with universities and their Technology Transfer Offices (TTO) can be a very frustrating experience if you don’t understand the unique cultural barriers at universities. I am often in the role of intermediary between the university and business world, so the following dialog is common:

Helge: The university wants to give you the technology but they need to carve out some intellectual property rights in the license.

Businessman: How much is it going to cost to get full ownership?

That simple question is the first step on the road to hell. Not because the question isn’t perfectly valid and reasonable, but because it misses the fundamental difference in value system between academia and industry. On the industry side the fundamental unit of value is money. All aspects of a business ultimately reduce to monetary value and maximizing them is the job of every good executive. In this case, it seems perfectly reasonable to ask about the monetary value of control (i.e. the increased cost of having control over the technology versus sharing control over it or even just being a passive licensee). This is a normal consideration in any commercial licensing discussion that I have ever seen.

Unfortunately, most universities don’t share that value system. In their context, the question makes no sense. Public universities have a mandate to pursue research in the interest of society. You can argue about their effectiveness but that mandate drives any decision that they will make. A full transfer of a technology to industry would cut the connection between the researcher and her field of innovation. That limits research in general and, depending on the scope of the intellectual property, can completely derail the activities of a larger research program. None of this is a monetary consideration and thus cannot be addressed by paying more.

Even private universities tend to operate this way, though usually for more basic monetary reasons. The TTO of most universities handle both commercialisation and research grant activities. It’s a reality of our university system that it is much easier for a university to obtain huge amounts of (free) grant money for future research than licensing revenue for a technology. Surrendering those future grant opportunities by blocking an area of research usually has a much higher monetary impact on the university than any increased payment they could get from industry for a particular invention.

There are a few other such barriers that money cannot resolve such as publications and student education. In my experience those are all fundamental barriers that are extremely hard to overcome through money or any other industry incentive. The good news is that there are solutions, just not the most obvious ones:

Freedom to Research

This is the basic problem described above. Industry wants control over the technology while the university wants to continue research. The solution comes from understanding what the company really wants. Exclusivity or ownership is usually just a shortcut for the following benefits: control over commercial development, freedom to develop and enforce the intellectual property, and preventing a “blackmail” scenario where the university develops critical improvements to the technology and demands a “ransom” later.

Each of those can be addressed with the following structure. The intellectual property is assigned to the company and the company returns a non-exclusive license back to the university. Both parties then set up a time-limited collaborative research arrangement which provides the company with either automatic assignment, a right of first refusal or at least a right of first bid for any improvements or related technologies. This structure might seem a bit complex but it achieves the goals of both sides. For smaller companies and start-ups you can replace the assignment with an exclusive license with a forced assignment option upon completion of some commercial milestones. That prevents any loss of intellectual property or research opportunity to the university if the start-up dies and is forced to fire-sale its patents.

Publications

Universities need to publish. There is just no way around it and trying to rein in this activity by force is futile. Instead, the best way to handle this is to create a review procedure for publications. This should give the company an opportunity to filter out key confidential information while still allowing the researchers to publish. A decent time interval for the review period will also ensure that any patent applications can be filed in time (6 months is usually plenty). A lot of fineness is required for this to work and I would strongly encourage companies to route this interaction through the technical counterpart to the university professor and not through their legal department.

Student Education

The last fundamental mandate of universities is to educate students. The company cannot impose specific projects onto graduate students or hold the university liable for activities of the students (as a practical matter universities generally don’t rep and warrant anything anyhow since they have very limited control over the activities of their faculty or students). Any post-acquisition support from the university therefore needs to be carefully thought through. It’s possible for the professor to give a bit of consulting support but harder for the students.

My preferred solution is to connect to the student through a separate arrangement designed specifically for industry collaboration. Good candidates for this are NSERC Industrial Post Graduate Scholarships (IPS) or the related MITACS-NSERC graduate scholarship. Those programs provide the student with a 2:1 or 3:1 top-up of her industry salary. The student will in return spend 30% to 50% of her time at the company in industrial research activities. If part-time support isn’t enough then it is also possible to front-load the arrangement (e.g. I have had a student work full-time for the first 8 months of a 2 year IPS and then “released” her back into academia for the rest of the scholarship). Not only is this arrangement university-friendly, it provides the students with a great educational experience.

All these of these issues can thus be solved in a way that is maybe a bit more complex but achieves the desires of both parties. Like all relationship issues, the process needs to be actively managed but I never actually had a problem once these structures were in place and monitored by reasonable people.

Technology Transfer Offices , ,

Leveraging the Technology Transfer Office

2 Comments Posted by on November 16, 2010

At this point you are probably wondering why on earth I recommended that you find the Technology Transfer Office (TTO) in the first place. If they can’t develop your business, what are they good for other than taking some of “your” money? In fact, every single email I received following my last post asks for a way to “avoid” the TTO. That’s really the wrong question to ask. Not only is there no legal way around them, you would be missing out on the tremendous value that a good TTO can bring to your venture. You just need to leverage them properly.

The most obvious benefit of a TTO is that they can help you protect your invention. Unlike business development expenses, they actually have money to file patents. This is a big deal given the steep cost of patent filing ($20k+). More importantly, these guys really understand patents and patent strategy. Developing good patents is an art form and requires a lot of practice to get right. These patents will be the foundation of your new venture and I cannot overstate the importance of leveraging the TTO in this area. I read a lot of patents in my line of work. Patents developed by university TTO are almost always solid documents. Patents written by independent inventors are a bit like sticking your hand into a bee hive – there is honey in there somewhere but most of the time it just hurts a lot…

In addition to patents, the TTO also sees a lot of venture deals. This puts them in a position to be a great sounding board for your new company. Remember, they have a closely aligned interest so their opinion is usually not just informative but also fairly unbiased. Venture capitalists have a similar level of deal experience but I definitely wouldn’t consider their perspective unbiased.

Especially for first time entrepreneurs it can be very valuable to get help on deal structures and investment terms. Beyond the legal aspect, they can also give you an idea of the current investment market dynamics, common terms and so forth. Every VC that I have ever pitched to would throw out a number for liquidation preference and present it as “the way things are right now”. They will say this with completely believable conviction, as any good salesman should. I remember several such meetings when I started out as a university entrepreneur and it is very easy to come away with the firm impression that all these preferences are just “normal”. That’s until you realise that those “industry standard” numbers were different from one VC to the next, often even in the same town (though smaller city VCs tend to achieve a fairly good degree of colusion…). The TTO can help you get a better statistical perspective of the local market dynamics. They will have added tremendous value to your venture even if all they did steer you around a few aggressive deal terms.

At TandemLaunch I function at least in part as an investor, so these days I am partly on the other side of the table. Nevertheless I strongly urge inventors to get their TTO to explain deal terms. That includes my own terms. I would much rather have a fully briefed inventor than somebody who blows up halfway through the project because of some structural misunderstanding. A lot of investment terms are really about alignment of interest or the lack thereof. Understanding these up front can make the difference between success and failure of a venture.

You can also leverage your TTO after the launch of your venture. An example of this might be ongoing patent administration where your TTO manages the intellectual property of your start-up. Especially early on this can be a lot cheaper than gearing up your own legal process. At BrightSide we left the vast majority of our patents with their source universities under an exclusive license. The patents were only pulled into the company on the day of our acquisition. While BrightSide handled the prosecution of the portfolio, we benefitted a great deal from the expertise and support of the various TTO partners.

The TTO can also indirectly help you to defend your patents. Universities generally don’t enforce their patents through litigation but they can help in other ways. Any business built around intellectual property will sooner or later reach the point where a big company considers the cost of your royalty fees versus paying the legal fee necessary to screw you in court. Depending on your industry they will be more or less direct about this, but rest assured that everybody makes the analysis. At that point it can sometimes be a helpful posture to have the patents owned by a big public institution with much deeper pockets than your start-up. It’s a bit of a high wire act but can be very valuable if you can avoid actual litigation (university probably won’t actually reach into those deep pockets).

 

Finally, don’t be afraid of the barriers that a TTO might throw into your path. There will be some administrative issues and likely some relationship work but that’s unavoidable in any engagement with separate legal entities. Try going through investment or worse acquisition due diligence and the interaction with a TTO will seem like a breeze. Also always keep in mind that you are really calling the shots. The university will usually own the patent but without your active involvement they have practically no way to commercialise the invention. Most TTO in my experience have a problem motivating their inventors to be pro-active. They won’t stand in the way if you go out into the world to find financing or set up deals. Just keep them in the loop, leverage their skill set and think of them as an early investor/mentor.

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Understanding the Technology Transfer Office

1 Comment Posted by on November 15, 2010

Hopefully you either followed my last guide or already knew your Technology Transfer Office (TTO). Now it’s time to get to know them a bit better.

First you need to figure out what is your relationship with your TTO. Broadly speaking, your university will follow one of two invention ownership models: inventor-owned or university-owned. In the first case you legally own the rights to your invention and can do with it what you want. These universities generally still have TTO to help the inventors if needed, usually for a cut of any commercialisation revenue.

More commonly, the university will own the invention as long as you are a professor, paid research staff or graduate student. The policies for undergraduate students are usually blurry but in general the university will own all rights if you used university resources during the development. Almost all universities that own the invention rights will share some percentage of commercialisation proceeds with the inventors. In my experience about 30% to 70% of net gain will go to the inventor depending on the university.

At first glance the inventor-owned sounds superior but the two models aren’t actually that different in reality. Most university inventors need help from the TTO to file patents and get started with a new venture. More often than not they will enter into the voluntary arrangement with the TTO at inventor-owned universities and thus arrive at the same percentages. The offering of the TTO in this context is usually too good of a value to pass up. The alternative is to raise the money for external patent lawyers which will give you a significant early stage dilution hit and add the complexity of fund raising.

Also keep in mind that these percentages often sound worse than they actually are. The university takes a cut of any compensation related to the invention, not for everything involved in commercialising the invention. For example, the University of British Columbia had a 50% interest in the invention at the heart of my spin-off BrightSide. But that cut represented less than 5% of my total payout at the acquisition. The rest came from founder shares, shares in lieu of salary, stock options, transaction bonuses and my own seed investment return – all contributions that I made above and beyond the original act of invention and thus independent from the university policy. An inventor with a less active role in the spin-off will come closer to the effective 50/50 ratio.

The second fact you need to understand about the TTO is that they are your best friend. It might not feel that way when they slowly grind through the paperwork, but they will the last truly friendly entity on your entrepreneurial road. Their relationship with you is effectively on the basis of common shares and they really don’t bring any additional agenda. They are basically what Angel investors are supposed to be and were until recently: a source of directly aligned funding and relevant expertise.

The third fact is a bit counter-intuitive. Contrary to what you might expect, most TTO aren’t actually that great at generating money. The reason for this are structural and certainly don’t mean that individual TTO officers can’t help you tremendously during your entrepreneurial quest. The structural limitation is that TTO cannot do business development, investment or commercialisation. Nobody gave them the tools for these activities and your invention won’t go very far if you rely on the TTO to commercialise your idea for you. The latter two items are fairly straightforward to explain. Investment requires money and TTO simply don’t have free cash-flow or any kind of investment mandate. Similarly, they don’t have money to hire engineers, marketeers or any other resource that would help with actual commercialisation of your idea.

The business development piece is a bit less obvious since that’s what they are supposed to be doing, right? The reality is that successful business development requires a lot of focus, energy and money. You are trying to make somebody pay money for a vague idea. Most TTO just don’t have the structure or resources to do this. The average TTO officer has 20-30 files on her desk. Each file will be an invention in a different industry, at best organised into “physical sciences”, “life sciences” and “IT”. The same officer will have no budget to travel or reach out to a particular industry. Unless somebody walks into her office with a cheque, this just isn’t going to be enough to commercialise the invention. In a way that puts them even more firmly in a comparable role to a traditional Angel investor. They can enable your business but cannot do it for you.

Once you understand your TTO, including its limitations, you can start leveraging these bright folks to kick start your venture. More on this in the next post.

Technology Transfer Offices , ,

Finding the Technology Transfer Office

Leave a Comment Posted by on November 10, 2010

As a professor or student interested in entrepreneurship you might have heard about something called a Technology Transfer Office (TTO). It’s the place that is supposed to help you turn your idea into money. The next few posts will be a quick guide to finding, understanding and leveraging these offices.

From my semi-anecdotal surveys, I estimate that 90% of university students and at least 50% of professors don’t know where their TTO is located or even that it exists. Some universities are better than others, but the TTO is usually just one more supporting department in a veritable ocean of such entities. Especially for students the TTO doesn’t have any immediately necessary function so it gets overlooked quickly (try handing out free past exam samples and you will get instant popularity).

Your search for the TTO is often made more difficult by the wide range of names and organisational location. Try looking for key words such as technology transfer, licensing, commercialisation or industry liaison. You might find an office that is semi-separate from the university structure, one that is within the office of the VP Research or even offices embedded within faculties. On most university websites you can find them under Research somewhere.

For professors the search is often a bit easier. Most TTOs emerged from grant management efforts. All universities have an office that helps professors obtain and administer research funding. Those places often also house the TTO, sometimes even with overlapping people. In the university culture this sort of makes sense since both functions deal with the procurement and administration of money. Of course the rest of the world would cringe at the notion of staffing the departments of Finance and Sales with the same people.

Once you found them, go and visit them! Even if you aren’t actively working on a commercial project, it’s a great idea to get to know the folks at your TTO. They are a great resource for your first entrepreneurial steps as long as you understand their boundaries.

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