Author: Editor

TechConnect 2016 Panel

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By: Norton Kaplan, President

I was invited to be a panel member of “Taking Environmental Technologies to Market: SBIR EPA and People, Prosperity & the Planet (P3) Special Session” at TechConnect 2016, Washington, DC. EPA’s P3 Program is a unique college competition for designing solutions for a sustainable future. The panel included the P3 Program Manager, an i-Corps provider, April Richards – EPA SBIR Program Director, a current P3 participant, a successful company that started with P3, and Foresight as the Commercialization Assistance Provider. The “story line” was presented as: P3 for the development of ideas, i-Corps for validation by end-users, EPA SBIR for funding assistance, and Foresight for Commercialization Strategy and Support.

The audience was primarily made up of small and large business representatives, laboratory researchers, government representatives and other entrepreneurs. One of the key elements of a market entry strategy as presented by Foresight is the “insertion” of the technology into the supply chain that serves the target market. Questions from the audience focused on this issue among others. “How do you identify the supply chain?” The primary approach is to ask your end-users in the target market. How they learn about and acquire technologies for their use or integration is the key. Starting at the end and working backwards often works to identify the supply chain. For example: If you were to ask a drinking water provider or lab technician they may indicate that they acquire a sensor technology as an integrated feature of a testing instrument or system. Moving backwards along the supply chain the instrument/system manufacturer may indicate that they acquire sensors and not sensor technologies so that they can offer a range of solutions. In this case the sensor technology must be integrated as a packaged device before it may be applied. Power conditioning, software, interface, packaging, etc. may be required before the technology can be called a “sensor.” Therefore, the supply chain insertion point is with the sensor manufacturers.

The successful 3P company validated this approach. By the way, this company is a past awardee of the EPA SBIR program and a client of Foresight. They emphasized the need to continually reach out to the supply chain participants as the technology development progressed. It takes diligence and persistence that paid off for this company.

Impressions of Shanghai

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By: Phyllis Speser, CEO

If there  was ever doubt over what “threat” the Chinese offer to Western technological dominance, shanghai puts stereotypes to bed. It’s big, it’s new, it’s bustling, and it’s beautiful. The architecture is breathtaking — literally. You see creativity like this elsewhere in Asia, but here is not just the buildings which are designed. There is an ascetic harmony which suggests someone planned this town or there is a jazz instinct at work. Either way its creative and wonderful. Go to the web and search for Shanghai, the bind, at night. See if you agree.

A people that know how to craft beauty  in a LED studded skyline instance innovation and collaboration. This is no longer the China of cheap knock-offs. What it all means remains to be worked out, but China is open for business.

Shanghai- City of the future

Everyone jockeying smart phones for their selfie shot along the river
Behind them the steel, glass, and light
of the peoples’ aspirations
In front (and out of the picture)
the staid rock legacy of
renovated reversed colonialism

An orchestral landscape
Percussed with river barge engines
Propelling commerce

Protecting Assets which are Not Property

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By: Phyllis Speser, CEO

The SARIMA (South African Research & Innovation Management Association) meeting began today in Durban South Africa with a fascinating session on Traditional Knowledge Systems (TKS) and biodiversity and the protection of native African knowledge, plant, and animal resources. A key challenge for protection is how to wrap communal resources into Western-inspired intellectual property regimes.

The problem can be explained this way. Traditional medicine is a communal asset. It does not belong to anyone, it is there for all to share. So it is not property, which is the exclusive asset of its owner. It is import to emphasize that traditional knowledge has no owner. Who owned the myth of Odysseus. “Western Civilization”? “The ancient Greeks?” No-one has ever owned it so it makes no sense to talk about copyright rights. Yet under current Western legal regimes, outside biological researchers can come in, document traditional plants and the practices by which these are used to treat patients, do some supplemental research to explain the underlying mechanisms, and then patent the results. It’s a first to file world. Similarly, an anthropologist or a tourist can film a ritual with permission, add an explanation to the video, and it can be called a documentary and copyrighted.

Intellectual property rights give the assignee a right to exclude others. The owner of IP rights can end up exploiting the rights in ways counter to the cultural intent of indigenous practitioners. We can even imagine scenarios where the assignees might be able to prohibit the “make, use, or sale” of a traditional medical practice, because under western IP laws, there is not any obligation to remunerate the practitioners of traditional medicine or other indigenous knowledge unless they have established an underlying claim. Of course, since the notion of property is weak or non-existent among indigenous people so using it as a basis for asset protection literally makes no sense. What is desired is not a right to exclude others (a right to exclusive appropriate the benefits). What is desired is a right that prevents misuse (a right to prevent misappropriation).

Intellectual property is, of course, just a subset of intellectual assets, which in turn are a subset of intangible assets. Something can be an asset without being property. Yet without it being property, there is currently no legal way to protect it from misuse and misappropriation. The environment or the climate are also not property. We use a legal fiction to treat them as if they were property, but as traditional knowledge systems highlight, the legal fiction itself distorts what the common asset is and what kind of protection non-property assets deserve. I don’t have a solution for this problem. It is something to mull over.

Pitching to Industry: Fast Track to Market Competition – May 10, 2016

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By: Dan Satinsky, VP of Business Development

NASA Langley Research Center (LaRC) is pushing technology commercialization in new, creative ways through its first-ever “Fast Track to Market Competition.” Conceived by Foresight Science & Technology, LaRC’s technology commercialization support contractor, the Office of Innovation at the Office of Strategic Analysis, Communications and Business Development (OSACB) solicited technologies from LaRC’s research community relevant to offshore wind, advanced manufacturing or autonomous unmanned systems to compete for funding awards and accelerated commercialization support.

The seven competing teams went through a two-day pitch training session to orient them on how best to promote the commercial value of their technology. Each team made a seven-minute pitch presentation to a panel of industry experts, composed of Jay Borkland, Apex Companies, LLC.; Ross Tyler, Business Network for Offshore Wind; Luke Chow, Prime Manufacturing Technologies, Inc.; Jeff Johnson, Virginia Tech Center Research Park; Marty Kaszubowski, Center for Enterprise Innovation; and Ed Boudreau, GE Renewable Energy. Norton Kaplan, who initiated the idea of the competition and Daniel Satinsky, who recruited the panel, led the Foresight support team.

The competition was designed to promote the culture of commercialization at LaRC and to acquaint business opinion leaders with the capabilities of LaRC. OSACB is reviewing the panel’s recommendations and will soon announce awards to one or more of the competing technology teams. No matter what the outcome, all of the teams learned more about commercialization and the panelists learned more about LaRC, making winners all around.

FLC National Meeting 2016

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By: Norton Kaplan, Foresight President & COO

I attended the FLC National Meeting this year which was hosted in Chicago. While there, I was engaged in an interesting conversation concerning the shrinking budgets of some of the Government Labs and the effect it has on technology licensing. The conversation included a Government Lab Manager, a Government Lab Technology Transfer Manager, an industry based Technology Transitioning Director, and me. The conversation began with the importance of providing technical support and guidance to the prospective licensee for the technology that is to be the subject of the licensing agreement. Everyone agrees that without this technical support for an immature lab technology the likelihood of a licensing agreement greatly decreases. The Lab Manager has used the goodwill of the innovators and inventors to support this effort. BUT those that manage the funding of the labs have put a stop to this practice as it is not included in the budgeted activities of the lab. This particular agency is not allowed to offer reimbursable services to the private sector so charging for these support services is not considered. The TT Manager also does not have discretionary funds for this important support function. A partial answer comes from the industry based Technology Transitioning Director. Their business model is to license promising technologies from the lab, hire the lab PI, raise VC and angel funding and then create a spinout company. The technical and commercial risks are not fully mitigated in this model although it is a step in the right direction. With the unmitigated risks the outside funding is often difficult to raise and at times costs the spinout company a substantial portion of the ownership stake making it less desirable for the PI to participate. The Foresight “spinup” model addresses the technical risk aspect by utilizing government funding sources (i.e. SBIR) to mature the technology before out licensing the technology to an industry participant. This makes it more viable and attractive from a business perspective with less risk. This model provides a pathway for the Government Technology to enter the private sector, provides a career alternative for the lab PI, supports the research and commercialization objectives of Government and other funding organization, and adds to the growth of the economy. Win, Win, Win!

Dinner In China

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By Phyllis Speser, CEO

Wherever you are, much of the real business takes place over coffee and meals. Here in China that has been raised to an art form. Here I am at a dinner with the mayor of Qingdao, the city best known in America for Tsingtao beer. Seating is important, as the closer to the host, the greater the honor. Over toasts and courses of wonderful food, discussions of how to work together mingle with jokes, laughter and all the delight of a pleasant social setting. When you hear about the importance of relationship building for doing business in Asia, this is what is meant. Friendships and trust are built simultaneously. As the Classical Chinese Daoist philosopher Chuang Tzu put it:” If it was not for the fish, the net would be unnecessary. When the fish is caught, the net is not needed. If it was not for the bird, the snare would be unnecessary. When the bird is caught, the snare is not needed. If it was not for the meanings, the words would be unnecessary. When the meanings are caught, the woods are not needed. I am looking for someone who understands the meanings so I can have a world with him.” If we do not spend time together how can we understand the meanings. It is a wonderful Chinese custom.

Foresight Co-authors Book on Open Innovation for SMEs

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Open innovation is a common activity in today’s technology-driven global economy. It involves moving technology and IP rights along technology supply chains. SMEs are universally acknowledged to be critical players in these supply chains yet until now, no one has written a book specifically for SME managers, entrepreneurs, and investors. Luca Escoffier, Adriano La Vopa, Phyllis Speser, and Daniel Satinsky are leading practitioners in the field of open innovation. In this book, they integrate years of hands-on experience with scholarly research to offer a practical framework for how SMEs can make money using open innovation, including tips and tricks-of-the-trade that enable readers to establish and run profitable open innovation initiatives.

 

For more information or to order, visit: http://bit.ly/1T3X1Cm

Foresight Lends Expertise to Bay Area Entrepreneurs

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Foresight’s Founder, Dr.Phyllis Speser works with startup incubator Founders Space in San Francisco (http://www.foundersspace.com/) to help budding entrepreneurs develop precision launch tactics for their innovations. On Januray 28th, Phyl delivered a 2 hour learning session on understanding the market around your innovation and how to launch an innovation based on that market.

Norton Kaplan Appointed as President

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We are pleased to announce the appointment of Norton Kaplan, a 35 year veteran in the high technology business, as President of the company. He was formerly Foresight’s Chief Operating Officer. He joined Foresight six years ago after a successful career in research, product development, and sales management in the robotics and machine tool industry. During the formal change of command ceremony Mr. Kaplan said: “Quality, value creation, creativity, respect, growth are my guiding principles in managing the staff at Foresight and serving of our customers.” Retiring President Phyllis Speser will continue as the company’s CEO. Mr. Kaplan will continue to work in Foresight’s Boston Office at 34 Hayden Rowe St., Suite 300, Hopkinton, MA 01748 and can be reached at 1-401-273-4844 ext 4002.

Review of Ron Adners “The Wide Lens”

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By: Don Marioni, Senior Foresight Board Member

This short book is a timely and focused guide to navigating the choppy channels of 21st century commerce and bringing new technology-based products to market. It is simply written for everyman, presents a step-by-step approach to implementation of the principles espoused and includes a rich field of vivid examples (both successful and otherwise).

Against my own experience as an aerospace systems engineer during the last half of the 20th century the message is merely basic system engineering applied to entrepreneurship. It consists of the two main precepts I have observed for success in all such endeavors:

  • Get the big picture, i.e. take a system wide view. In the case of Tech Transfer and/or marketing, examine all aspects of the proposed technology that can affect the mission goal, including all external interfaces. The goal here is to make the maximum profit through maximum sales, not just be first to market or just be profitable or just be the most profitable or just some other metric. All aspects has to include all costs to get to market, all target market segments, all competitors, all obstacles to sales Etc.
  • Do your homework, i.e. due diligence, before you commit to take on the project. In the case of Tech Transfer and/or marketing, research the experts/veterans of the market for in-depth assessments of the proposed technology. As my favorite former boss used to say “Do a penetrating analysis to get piercing insights into the system before you present it” – all while forcefully poking his finger into my sternum.

It also reminded me of a field I dallied in briefly during the early ‘60s (as a member of a national technical committee of the AIAA) viz. Reliability & Maintainability Engineering, where one of the techniques was known as Failure Effects & Modes Analysis (FEMA). In plain language it was “figure out how many ways things can go wrong, describe the effects and propose ways to mitigate/prevent them in the future.” Prof. Adner has written here a much more succinct and comprehensible thesis for entrepreneurs than what we typically had previously for developers of various vehicles of military and commercial uses. He should be commended for this contribution.

A couple of nits are noted from my oblique perspective:

I suggest the term econo-system of innovation vice eco-system, since eco (from the Greek “oiko“ meaning “house”) and ecosystem (meaning “the interrelated physical and chemical environment of the community of animals, plants and bacteria”) are less well-suited than econo-system (from the Latin “oeconomicus”) meaning “the management of the income, expenditures Etc. of a household, private business, community or government”).

Secondly, I suggest the title Wide Field of View, vice Wide Lens. I have some familiarity with characteristics and performance of lenses and antennae for collection of electromagnetic spectrum signals and am quite certain that the diameter of these components is inversely proportional to the image resolution (optical signal) and half power beam width (electronic signal), rather than directly. Perhaps Prof. Adner’s Mechanical Engineering professors at Cooper Union neglected that chapter in his physics classes.

On a practical note, an enterprise with which I am currently involved is developing an innovative software tool with the aim of reaching a global customer community (Technology Transfer) via cloud access on the Internet; we will explore the application of the principles in Wide Lens to this effort to increase our chances of success.