Smeal College, College Of Engineering Integrate Students Into Technology Commercialization Process
Smeal College, College Of Engineering Integrate Students Into Technology Commercialization Process
UNIVERSITY PARK, PA -- The Farrell Center for Corporate Innovation and Entrepreneurship at Penn State’s Smeal College of Business and Penn State’s College of Engineering have launched an initiative aimed at providing undergraduate and graduate business and engineering students with hands-on experiences in converting inventions into commercial opportunities.
Made possible by a $12,000 grant from the National Collegiate Inventors and Innovators Alliance (NCIIA), the new course—Market-Pull Technology Commercialization—is built around the concept that effectively transferring scientific or engineering innovations to commercially viable products must be driven by market needs and demands. The course will call on student teams to research market needs and gaps, perform corporate due diligence, develop business plans, review existing patents and licenses, and participate in a variety of other necessary steps as they work with technology partners to commercialize need-based product ideas and breakthrough research.
“The process of technology commercialization suffers from a low success rate stemming from several root causes,” said Anthony Warren, Director of the Farrell Center and co-instructor of the new course. “Foremost is that the ‘technology-push’ model typically employed is not nearly effective as the ‘market-pull’ model. Through this course, we'll help students become effective agents to effect transfer from lab to marketplace, a skill that is highly valued in the business, technical, and legal sectors.”
Activity during the pilot semesters of the course, scheduled for fall 2003 and spring 2004, will be driven by a pair of medical inventions from Dr. Charles Palmer, a Neonatology Physician at Penn State’s Hershey Medical Center. The 20 students enrolled in the course each semester will work to bring Palmer’s invention for an infant chest splint, which has already received three patents and is being manufactured and sold in Japan, Europe, and Canada, to market in the United States. Students will also work to push Palmer’s unique infant respirator invention further along the path toward commercialization.
“Every year students throughout the Penn State system are already immersed in hundreds of potentially high-value intellectual property concepts and activities,” said Elizabeth Kisenwether, Assistant Professor of Engineering and co-instructor of the new course. “The Market-Pull Technology Commercialization course will take entrepreneurship education and practice at the University to the next level by providing a structured path to bring students into the technology transfer process in a cost effective, broad-based approach.”
Anthony Warren can be reached at 814-865-4593 or twarren@psu.edu and Elizabeth Kisenwether can be reached at 814-863-1531 or lizk@psu.edu.
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REPORTERS & EDITORS: For more information, please contact Wyatt DuBois in the Smeal College of Business Media Relations Office at 814-863-3798 or wed112@psu.edu.
Penn State's Smeal College of Business offers highly ranked undergraduate, MBA, executive MBA, Ph.D., and executive education opportunities to more than 5,500 students at all levels. Featuring academic departments of accounting, finance, marketing, insurance and real estate, management, and supply chain and information systems, the college is also home to major research centers such as the Center for Supply Chain Research, the Institute for the Study of Business Markets, the Center for Digital Transformation, the Farrell Center for Corporate Innovation and Entrepreneurship, the Center for Global Business Studies, and the Center for the Management of Technological and Organizational Change.
