Consider This: Technology Transfer Is Not Just About Royalties

“Technology transfer" is a term of art to those of us in the field but a magical mystery tour for so many who benefit from university innovations reaching the marketplace, or who evaluate, study, fund and invest in this process. 

It's all about the millions in royalties, right? Or professors and Ferraris?
The truth about technology transfer is that the process is so complex, so multi-dimensional and so driven by external forces that few of us who practice the craft can easily explain all aspects of our daily activities. 

To a certain degree, anyone looking at technology transfer is drawn to focus on royalty income -- because that's the language of corporate America, a language we all can understand. Yet while corporations talk about revenues, price per share or other measurable monetary concepts, the university has never been about return on investment, shareholder dividends or net profit. 

So why should the square peg that is technology transfer be forced into such a round hole? Any effort to capture the impact of academic technology transfer that focuses only on royalty income will fail to capture or profile the full impact of a region's great faculty scientists, who make the brilliant discoveries, and the dedicated professionals who manage the process of connecting those innovations with the marketplace. 

Limiting the discussion to royalty income as a measure of success in connecting innovation for the public good will fail to consider, for example, the value of drugs developed at UNC-Chapel Hill and currently in clinical trials in sub-Saharan Africa for treating malaria, sleeping sickness and the parasitic disease leishmaniasis. By the way, Carolina had to foreswear royalty income on those drugs in order to receive clinical trial funding from the Gates Foundation.
And how about our effort to help establish a nonprofit vaccine development company, Global Vaccines, Inc., whose mission is to design and develop affordable vaccines for people in poor countries? Doesn't show up on the royalty report -- but imagine the economic (and human) impact on people now able to receive preventive or therapeutic treatment for otherwise debilitating or life-threatening diseases. 

If we wanted to focus on looking strong in the royalty reports, we'd be smart as an institution and a region to put much less emphasis on facilitating the formation and growth of local start-up companies to commercialize our innovations. 

Sure, locally created start-up companies attract investment, grow jobs and generate wealth locally, and they often do the best job at shepherding a technology through the "valley of death" and toward market (and patent) success. However, they pay us with restricted, illiquid equity, and they often pose the greatest financial risk in terms of reimbursing the university for certain direct costs typically charged to licensee companies. 

Instead of start-ups, direct licensing of research discoveries into existing companies -- typically located elsewhere -- would offer more up-front cash and royalties and much less ongoing financial risk to the university. 

Technology transfer successes emanating from North Carolina institutions abound. Hundreds of new companies have been created, along with untold numbers of jobs, investments and other economic benefits. 

None of the state's technology transfer offices -- certainly not UNC-Chapel Hill's -- would be disappointed to have a Gatorade or a Warfarin in our portfolios; we'd all enjoy the opportunity to manage a blockbuster innovation and to use the royalty windfall to invest in more research and innovation. But we'd still run our programs in the same manner -- we'd just spend less time retelling the story about the true impact and importance of connecting our innovation pipeline for the public good.

Mark Crowell is the Associate Vice Chancellor for Economic Development and Technology Transfer at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill and president of the AUTM Foundation