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	Robert Ronstadt, vice president of technology commercialization and director of the University’s new Technology Commercialization Institute. Photo by Vernon Doucette

By David J. Craig

Boston University has long encouraged entrepreneurship: in 1975, it formed the Community Technology Fund, among whose aims is to help BU researchers with innovative ideas develop business plans and obtain venture capital financing. CTF was one of the first such programs at any university and to date has helped launch 31 faculty start-ups. In addition, the Photonics Center, the BioSquare Discovery and Innovation Center at the Medical Campus, and several other BU organizations include the creation of new companies in their mission.

Now the University is leveraging its expertise in technology transfer to launch education and research programs that will train students and faculty how best to commercialize groundbreaking research. The programs will be led by the new Technology Commercialization Institute (TCI), which also will coordinate and expand BU’s various entrepreneurship efforts.

TCI is directed by Robert Ronstadt, the University’s new vice president of technology commercialization. The cofounder of a pioneering entrepreneurship program at Babson College in the late 1970s, Ronstadt has extensive experience in business planning, raising capital, financial management of new enterprises, and managing new product research and development.

“ The goal of our new institute will be to combine education with research to build a new academic and professional discipline in technology commercialization — something we have been building toward for a quarter of a century,” says Chancellor John Silber. “Dr. Ronstadt is ideally prepared to lead this effort.”

A new discipline

Ronstadt predicts that technology commercialization will be recognized as an academic discipline within the next 5 to 10 years, and that BU is positioned to lead in the field’s development. “Many universities don’t have any programs of the sort that BU has to help researchers develop venture ideas,” he says. “So the University is way ahead of the game.”

TCI’s education component begins in January, with Ronstadt teaching a graduate-level, University-wide course in technology commercialization. “The course will focus on how to assess the commercial potential of an idea at the research stage, determine what kind of market it’s suited for, and then develop it,” he says. “Graduate students today increasingly are thinking about commercialization, because they see their professors doing it, and they’re getting involved in commercialization projects themselves. It’s a positive aspect of their education.”

Ronstadt points out that faculty start-ups, in addition to financially benefiting researchers and the University through licensing agreements, serve a humanitarian function by shuttling important technologies into the marketplace, where they can help treat disease, for example, and better society in other ways. “I believe that tomorrow’s graduate students in almost any discipline, but particularly in the sciences, engineering, medicine, law, and business, shouldn’t leave school without taking a course in technology commercialization,” he says, “because they’re going to be affected by the process in one way or another.”

Ronstadt, who directed a technology think tank at the University of Texas in Austin for five years before coming to BU in May, says additional technology commercialization courses will be offered in subsequent semesters and that eventually BU may offer a master’s or a Ph.D. program in the field. TCI also plans to offer seminars on technology commercialization for faculty, and to collaborate with the School of Management’s Entrepreneurial Management Institute to increase the number of professional seminars the SMG institute offers on the subject.

Making the most of resources

In order to discover the best strategies for bringing technology from University labs into the marketplace, Ronstadt plans to conduct a research project “mapping the technology assets within Boston University,” he says. “There are a few clusters of BU labs that are doing work that have commercial potential and are very visible, such as in the areas of nanotechnology, biohealth, alternative energy, and biodefense. But there are other programs, such as in the College of Communication, where we know less about the work with commercial potential that is being done. My research team is going to look at the entire University to find out where technologies are bubbling up and where we have strengths and weaknesses in terms of identifying technologies and helping researchers in the commercialization process.”

TCI will coordinate the efforts of seven BU organizations integrally involved in technology transfer — CTF, the Photonics Center, Beacon Photonics, BioSquare Discovery and Innovation Center, the Fraunhofer Center for Manufacturing Innovation, the Entrepreneurial Management Institute, and the Center for Health Care Entrepreneurship — to help them collaborate efficiently.

In addition, Ronstadt hopes to increase the number of relatively small awards, between $50,000 and $75,000, available to BU researchers for developing technologies that could be commercialized, increase assistance to researchers whose inventions are commercially viable but lack the huge market potential necessary to attract venture capital, and hold more competitions for promising research projects.

“ I also want to improve outreach efforts to BU researchers so that they know whom to contact for help with a disclosure, a patent, a license, a venture possibility, or with any other questions they may have associated with the commercialization process,” he says. “I certainly welcome and encourage anyone to pick up the phone and call me. The main objective of this institute is to increase opportunities for faculty and students, and to make the technology commercialization process inclusive.”

To contact Robert Ronstadt, call 353-9494 or e-mail ronstadt@bu.edu.

5 September 2003
Boston University
Office of University Relations