Where Do Your Technology Descriptions Come From

It’s Not The Arrow; It’s the Archer

No matter whether you have a home-grown IP Management Database or a commercial application, the problem isn’t the IP Management System.  Most technology tracking and management software was never meant to be a central repository for Search Engine Optimized technology marketing content.  No prior system was specifically designed to integrate with the vast array of new, user and search engine-friendly, web-based technologies, without significant and costly customization.

When new or updated information is published, a manual process must still be undertaken to get the same information, which now resides on the website, out to its intended audience.  That is also assuming that there are adequate resources available to build fully developed marketing campaigns for the tens of thousands of new inventions and discoveries coming out of research facilities each year.  Further, the same process must be repeated each time there is an update or upgrade.

In fact, there are plenty of tools that are simple to use and produce dramatically better results than the way most TTO's do things now, but between bureaucracy, budget and fear of the unknown, most tech transfer offices refuse to accept that they are doing a terrible job of getting information about their innovations out to the world in a way that those searching for it can actually find it and begin to engage in the licensing process.

The Promise of the Future for Tech Transfer

How to Get There

It is possible to leverage the power of the Web to bring potential licensees, folks that you don’t have contact info for, to the universe of amazing technologies that often lie dormant waiting for someone to discover them.  By using ubiquitous web tools, and following proven content-optimization methods, industry can find out about licensable technologies and, in many cases, actually license it, with no human intervention, no phone calls, no negotiation and no paperwork.

Whatever applications and tools the TTO chooses, though, should really be a secondary consideration.  The application itself is simply a means to an end.  In my mind, which application one uses is only as important as a tech transfer office's ability to change the way they market their technologies.  It is so important for people to understand that they should not be using jargon, technical descriptions and the indecipherable gobbledygook that professors and researcher write. (mostly, it seems, to impress other professors and researchers)  one can find reams of quantitative data that PROVES that people simply do not use the web to search for solutions to problems the way most of us in the tech transfer world seem to think they do. 
 

If folks aren't beating down your door to find out more about all of the cool, ground- breaking inventions and discoveries that you have to offer, you no longer have to ask yourself why; It is because you are writing for the wrong audience.  I have had this argument a hundred times with folks in our own office and all I can say is that the results speak much louder than anything I can say or do to convince them.  

I can give you a hundred examples of how easy it is to get people to actually notice your licensable technologies, but most often, it doesn't matter, because folks don't want to do the work it would take to fix their content.  They just want to post whatever they have in KSS, InfoEd or Inteum, directly to the web, with no regard for whether or not anyone in the world will ever be able to find it, use it or understand it, if they do.  We in the Tech Transfer world seem to think that the simple act of getting a technology description online means that anyone searching for a solution to a problem, one that has anything at all to do with the general nature of one of our inventions, will easily be able to find it.

The fact is, there are tens-of-thousands of technologies being listed on IP aggregator sites, but the real people out there searching for them can't find them because we do such a horrible job of writing technology descriptions, optimizing our content and setting ourselves up for success.  We don't understand the tools that we are using or how search engines work.  Optimizing content can help us do our jobs by bringing unsolicited leads to our doorstep.

Tech Transfer Offices need to completely scrap the way they think about how they describe their technologies.  We need to begin to learn how to use the tools that we already have available to us.  And, finally, we need stop trying to turn technology management systems, like KSS, Inteum and InfoED, that are in no way meant (or equipped) to help one market the technologies whose descriptions are housed there, let alone do so online.  We need to start thinking more clearly about our the behavior of our audience.

Why are Tech Transfer Organizations Using video / Web 2.0 / social media tools

It Gets Worse

The trend that sees tech transfer offices skipping the most important steps in the online-marketing-tool "learning curve," and instead jumping directly to a strategy of using video/Web 2.0/social media tools, without ever learning how the web, search, content optimization and basic internet marketing processes work, means that they are focusing time and resources on steps that won’t help them until they go back and learn the basics.

If you can’t effectively market a technology online, so that you get unsolicited leads, why would you shift your focus to trying to market a video about that technology.  If you are doing this you are throwing good money after bad.

what a mess

OK, I am completely aware that I am the exact wrong person to criticize anyone about home-office cleaning, clutter or organization, but...a complete day spent cleaning and organizing, in only one room, is not really ok. It is obsessive-compulsive.  

I have three offices (let's not talk about my neurosis and other obvious issues or we'll be here all day) and even if I had dog urine covering every square inch I'm pretty sure I couldn't spend more than three hours cleaning them. My sister does the same thing; she spends 12 hours cleaning, which is akin to a vacation for her, then spends another 12 hours congratulating herself for having done something "productive." NOT EVEN CLOSE

Feeling good about getting stuff organized is one thing, but not feeling a little ashamed (instead of triumphant) that it got that way in the first place is kinda weird. Don't you think that it is more a display of tendency toward giving yourself messes to clean up because the accomplishment of cleaning them is a tangible manifestation of the work you got done at home that day.  

I used to work for a huge company and I was the very first "remote" worker. In fact, I wrote the business case for a new product bundle called "work-at-home solutions." Since then I have learned some things about people who spend most of their time working at home. One of the most common things that we do while we are supposed to be working is household chores/home improvement activities. This is because most of us who sit in front of a computer screen or talk on the phone for a living don't produce something that we can reach out and touch, see or hold. We, therefore, compensate by trying to complete tasks with tangible results.

The other thing that we do is that we print stuff out and create piles of paper, files full of folders and shelves full of stuff. Thus the clutter. I am not judging, because even though I realize that this is, subconsciously, the reason why my office is usually messy, I rationalize these bad habit by saying "its just easier to read stuff off paper," or "if I print it out then I can make notes during that meeting..."  

The moral of the story is that the mess (with the possible exception of the dog pee) didn't get there by accident. It's there because you need it to be.