iBRIDGE CONVERSATION

The National Council of Entrepreneurial Tech Transfer (NCET2) has recently started a speaker series focused on International Innovation. Moderated by Randy Mitchell, International Trade Strategist for Private Equity, US Department of Commerce, this free webinar series will be discussing topics related to international innovation, and will focus on a different country each session. It is free to participate, but registration is required.

The Scheduled Sessions

• Innovation in Brazil - Wed, 27 Aug 2008: View the recorded session
• Innovation in Russia - Wed, 24 Sep 2008, 1:00 - 2:30 ET
• Innovation in Northern Europe - Thu, 30 Oct 2008, 1:00 - 2:30 ET
• Innovation in China - Date TBA
• Innovation in India - Date TBA

Near the date of each conference you can register to attend at http://ncet2.org/UpcomingEvents/international-innovation.

Summer is always a good time to catch up on research (and also when many academics post working papers). Here are a couple of recent pieces of research that caught our eye in the university entrepreneurship space.

• Valuing University-based Firms by Damiano Bonardo, Stefano Paleari, and Silvio Vismara

How can you best measure the impact of universities in creating high-impact businesses? Patents? Start-ups? Licensing? I don’t have an answer, but I think this research from Europe which looked at firms that went public on the stock markets of Germany, UK, France, and Italy from 1995 to 2002 was a really good effort. They found just over 8% of all non-financial firms going public in this period could trace their emergence to a university. If anyone has seen a similar piece on the U.S., please let us know!

• University Spin-Off’s Transfer Speed – Analyzing the Time from Leaving University to Venture by Kathrin Müller

In studying firms founded between 1996 and 2001 in Germany, these authors found something surprising about academic entrepreneurs. Fifty percent of firms founded by academics who had left a university didn’t establish the company until more than four years after leaving their university positions. We have seen some research on the time lag of declaring an invention to when it is commercialized but this line of research on time lag of the academic entrepreneur from leaving one position to going to the next is new to us.

• Commercializing the Laboratory: Faculty Patenting and the Open Science Environment by Kira Fabrizio and Alberto Di Minin

Contributing to a somewhat confusing literature on the subject, this new piece of published research finds patenting and publishing are complements to each other.

I just returned from beautiful, sunny Palm Springs, CA and DEMO 08. It’s been a year since we re-launched the iBridge Network there, and it was great to be back! As part of the Kauffman Foundation’s sponsorship, we had a booth and a panel of faculty. Dr. Steven Barlow, from the University of Kansas and Dr. Yannis Papakonstantinou, from the University of California, San Diego, gave their insights on the research and turning ideas into innovations. In addition to our outstanding panel, I want to give many congratulations to all the DEMO God winners for 2008. There were so many outstanding innovations and products, it was really amazing to see all of them in action during the demonstrations. I loved the Pulse Smartpen and Livescribe Paper, it is a computer in a pen that records and links audio to the paper! I know pretty amazing, if only I had that in college. The other product that really caught my eye was Flypaper. Flypaper allows the regular Joe to create multimedia communication without having to figure out Flash. I can’t wait until they are all available to the public, so I can put them to good use!

We also had many questions for the iBridge Network, and many people who have heard about us through the grapevine. We were able to demonstrate the functionality of the Web site and show many of the exciting innovations that you all have posted.

As you may have read in the iBridge Network Newsletter, Laura is speaking in Boston at the Investing in Tech Transfer & Early Stage Conference from October 17 -18, 2007.
Sound interesting? We think so! IBF, the group hosting the conference, has offered iBridge Network members discounted registration fees - scroll to the bottom of this post for more information!

The audience will include a range of people who all play a role in ensuring that university research and technology leads to further innovation such as research & development scientists, tech transfer executives from university and research labs, private equity investors, new business development executives, venture capitalists, and corporate investors. We are excited to introduce them to the iBridge Network and our members!

The conference covers a range of topics from How & Why Venture Capitalists are Funding University and Research Spin Outs to Investing in Academic Research to Tech Transfer in Medical Centers, Life Sciences, Clean Tech and Nanotech.

Come join Laura in Boston! IBF Conferences have offered iBridge Network members a discounted registration rate of $100 off of the emerging growth rate of $895. To receive this price, enter S-KINUN when you register. To register, and to learn more, click here or contact Cathy Fenn, IBF’s Registrar at 516-765-9005 x 210 or Cathy@IBFConferences.com