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Workshop 1: Sustaining Innovation
Moderators:
Session a: Raj Veeramani and Brad Kramer
Session b: Russ Lea and Linbing Wang
Each
PFI project has at a minimum a partnership that involves a private
sector partner. It has been up to the discretion of the project
teams to choose a set of partners best suited to achieve the
goals of their respective projects. Partnerships come in many
different sizes and shapes and may include educational institutions;
Federal, state and local government agencies or offices; and
businesses, large and small; and nonprofit organizations. Such
partnerships are nuclei of innovation that connect new scientific
discoveries to practical uses within the communities. This session
will focus on how best to sustain current partnerships, establish
new collaborations, and continue on the innovation pathway.
The PFI community will share ideas, experiences and best practices,
and discuss strategies to sustain innovation after the PFI grant
has ended.
1.
Success stories of PFI projects that have obtained succeeding
funding from other programs of NSF or other agencies, private
sectors or resulted in patents, copyrights, industrial standards,
and royalties. How to achieve these successes?
2. Has the PFI project actually altered the campus culture for
promoting innovation and commercialization? If not, how to improve
it?
3. Highly-risky and creative research may not be matured enough
within the PFI time and budget frame for direct
commercialization.
How to solve this problem? Can we have potential second round
funding for those projects that need additional developments
to achieve maturity (with requirements that industrial cash
support is committed)?
4. Did the PFI project alter the resources that are committed
to the Tech Transfer office to enable rapid development of technologies
(licensing) or launch companies (spin out or spin in) with SBIR
or Angel fund assistance? Is there possibility for SBIR to pick
up some PFI ideas for further development or implementation?
5. How to increase and measure the success of the PFI education
components? How to evaluate the long-term impacts resulted from
the education components?
6. Are there success stories on international outreach? Is there
any potential international opportunity perceived ?
7. What campus derived incentives and recognition are provided
that don't impede faculty entrepreneurs?
8. Can faculty maintain part-time appointments in their campus
units while serving as officers in private ventures?
9. Are the campus COI/COC policies elastic enough to ensure
faculty can follow their innovations to the marketplace?
10. Specifically what can the PFI community do to achieve sustainability?
11. My grant is coming to an end, how can I continue to do the
good work once the NSF funding runs out?
12.
How do I go about getting university buy-in to institutionalize
the
innovation efforts that my team has developed?
13.
The ideal innovation partner, how do I identify, recruit, and
retain
industrial collaborators?
14.
Industrial sponsors are from Mars, University researchers are
from
Venus - how do I get the two to speak the same language and
identify
common objectives?
15.
What are the pitfalls and traps that should be avoided to make
sure>
that my innovation project will succeed? |
