Thanks to all that participated in our annual CTTC inventor satisfaction survey. The outcomes were very encouraging – the best we’ve ever had. But equally valuable were the comments provided by our inventors, which identified both strengths of the office and areas ripe for improvement. Below are three themes from the responses that we thought we’d share, and we wanted to let you know what we’re doing to address them:
Need more outreach to student and other non-traditional inventor groups.
Great idea! Reaching out to potential inventor groups is an important part of what we do. We can’t commercialize inventions if we never hear about them. CTTC has been working over the past year to provide greater outreach to all inventive departments and centers to make sure that everyone who might need us, knows what services we offer and how to reach us – we’re trying to be more visible. That effort has led to a number of new invention disclosures and greater contact with faculty and staff. But that effort has missed some groups, like students, post-docs and residents. During the 2015 fiscal year, we’ll amass a list of the various student organizations and groups and reach out to them to see what kind of information we should provide, and try to start a dialogue with our non-traditional inventors. We’re already putting together some educational programs that will hit some of these non-traditional groups, including the Medical Center’s ASPIRE program. CTTC has also piloted a new tech transfer rotation program for radiology residents, which we may expand in the next year. If you’re interested in hearing from us and learning more about what we do and how we can help you, please contact us at cttc@vanderbilt.edu.
Need greater transparency on what you do and more frequent, timely updates.
We understand everyone’s desire for greater transparency and information and improving on this front has been of great importance to us over the past several years. Our inventor survey scores have continually shown improvement, but there is always room to do better. In fact, there are several internal initiatives that we are undertaking that should help with transparency and communication over the next year. In 2012, we refined and published our Commercialization Process to give each of you a better idea of what we do with your inventions once we receive them, what you can expect from us, and how you can get involved. We’re now working on putting some additional detail to that process to show you exactly what kinds of reports you’ll be getting at various stages of evaluation, marketing and licensing. And in response to your suggestions, we’ll continue to look for other ways to improve our responsiveness and the pace at which we proactively update you on our progress licensing your inventions.
Need a website for tracking inventions, stage of process.
This is not a new request and we’ve been working on a solution that will work for everyone without creating a security or confidentiality risk. A future solution will require some internal infrastructure updates, which we’re in the process of making now. This update to our Inteum database, through its Inteum Web product, will give us greater flexibility to create an “inventor portal” in the future to provide you with information on your disclosures, patent filings, and even marketing contacts and licensing. But we ask for your patience while we put this together and in the meantime don’t hesitate to reach out to your licensing officer for any reports that you might need.