BU - Office of Technology Development - Technology Transfer - Invention - Process

The Technology Transfer Process - Marketing

Marketing your technology means making people aware of it and its potential commercial value. We do this through both passive and active marketing schemes.

1. Passive Marketing

We list a brief description of the technology elsewhere on this web site. You will be asked to write a short paragraph that you would like to appear in this listing.

2. Active Marketing

Publications and presentations at conferences will disseminate your developments to a wide audience. If the technology represents an important scientific development and/or it has important practical implications that can readily be communicated to an educated general readership, you may want to consider working with the University's Office of Public Relations to put out a press release to coincide with its publication in a peer-reviewed journal. Some journals (e.g., Nature, Science, PNAS) have a Commentary or News and Views section that interprets the implications of the articles appearing in that edition. If your paper is reviewed in this section, inquiries about your work will often result.

Having your own home page with a description of your research interests will enable people to find you via searches. However, it is important that you not describe your invention on the web site before we have filed a patent application – this would be considered a public disclosure.
We have also developed a collaborative marketing strategy to leverage the strengths of Faculty and OTT to market technologies directly to companies.

We ask you to write a first draft of a NON-CONFIDENTIAL marketing letter. We will give you a marketing letter that has previously been used successfully to market a technology as a model. We will edit it to final form.

We ask you for companies you are aware of that are or should be interested in the technology. Sources of leads include industrial attendees at scientific conferences, publications by industrial scientists, former students, and so forth. We will augment the list based on our own knowledge of the particular industry, and identify a suitable contact and address for each company if you did not have your own contact.

We will send individual letters to the companies we've identified. The letters ask the company to contact you in the first instance, since generally the initial issues are technical.

Initial follow-up generally requires a Confidential Disclosure Agreement and/or Material Transfer Agreement to protect both sides' interests as the information necessary to evaluate mutual interest in forming a partnership is exchanged. If you receive such a request, complete and send us a Confidential Disclosure Agreement Request Form or Material Transfer Agreement Request Form as appropriate and we will generate the necessary agreement and send it to the company.

3. Finding Companies

Locating information on companies working in specific segments of fast moving high technology markets can be somewhat daunting. If the segment is large enough then it’s usually possible to find an associated trade journal. In these cases generating a list of potential licensees may be as simple as reviewing the corporate advertisements in the proper magazine. Photonics Spectra (www.photonics.com) is a good example of this type of journal in the photonics industry. Similarly to many others, Photonics Spectra also provides a “Buyers Guide” that lists of the companies by the product type. Likewise if there is a public company in that segment then usually their SEC filings will provide a list of competitors. SEC filings can be accessed on the web through the BU library at http://www.bu.edu/library/eresources/bize.html. At that same link you will have access to a number of databases that store information on both public and private companies.
In life sciences, Recombinant Capital’s database is normally our first starting point.
Industry conferences are another excellent source of information. The exhibitors, speakers, and poster presenters usually capture a good percentage of any market segment. Usually the organizers of the conference will list this type of information on their website. (For example http://www.ibcusa.com/).

If you are working in a niche market then often the best sources of information are the customers for those products. Usually people that have purchased an expensive or exotic piece of equipment have to justify that expense and as such have conducted some level of competitive assessment or market analysis. If you can find someone that has purchased a similar piece of equipment, then take a few moments to interview them and inquire about the companies they considered.

Our office can assist you with this type of research. In addition to the databases that are available through the library or the Internet, we also belong to a few proprietary databases that provide information on venture backed or publicly held companies. We also subscribe to a number of trade journals from various industries and would be happy to help you on this quest.

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