Lets get down to business
by Claudia Sonea
Being one of the best universities in the world, Harvard has to deal with different issues everyday and the latest one is that of the technology transfer operation. For the up-coming change of president at Harvard University a faculty committee, led by Laurie Glimcher, Harvard cancer biologist, studying the commercialization of research at the university has made a resume on the work over the past year. The main recommendation was to uniform the standards across disciplines in order to make commercialization of technologies more efficient by going beyond the biomedical field. Nowadays, Harvard lays its patents to inventions only in the medical area or to those to which they contributed with a large amount of money. There have been signs of change since 2005, when the former president, Lawrence Summers, hired Isaac Kohlberg, the highest paid university administrator in the USA, according to the headlines. At NYU Kohlberg had great achievements increasing technology licensing deals dramatically, but could he change Harvard situation too? His task is very hard indeed. Although in biotech research Harvard came on the first place, according to a study made in 2006, in technology transfer ranked 18th. Despite some changes like consolidating operations between Harvard Medical School and the so-called Faculty of Arts and Sciences, packing the newly named "Office of Technology Development" with Ph.Ds that can raise innovation potential, Kohlberg has not yet succeeded to make a difference. Licensing revenues are flat and the number of patents granted to Harvard faculty is slightly down since his arrival. My biggest question is when Kohlberg's efforts will have an echo in real life. And also if the new president will have the same policy like the former or he will change. I think that if their main purpose is to improve technology transfers, they should hire people with experience in sales and negotiation and stop using the same model that worked for some, because what is good for them it is not necessary good for them too. They should try to get to the core of the problem and eliminate the evil from the roots. Surf on and find out what will spin next.
related story: http://www.xconomy.com/2007/07/24/can-harvard-match-mit-at-tech-transfer/
| by Claudia Sonea for SigEx Ventures (http://sigexventures.com) |
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