Blog – Foresight Science & Technology

The AI-Enabled TTO

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Posted March 28, 2024 By: Reda El Alami

On March 21st, Foresight attended an AUTM webinar called “The AI Enabled TTO.” The presenters were Marc Sedan & John Kearney of NYU and Declan Weldon from the University of Glasgow. These presenters provided background information on what AI is, how to implement it in your workplace, the worries/challenges of AI, and specific use cases in their workplace to show how to adapt AI to your everyday. The most common callout from all of the presenters was resistance to change. This problem is their biggest hurdle, and more specifically, people do not want to change processes they have used for countless years. Once the experts demonstrated how AI worked, they introduced it into the workplace in steps. It then started to get more widely used and saved time and money while at the same time giving users the confidence to use this in their everyday work.

Mr. Kearney talked in depth about how NYU was one of the first places to gain access to AI, other than the healthcare field. NYU introduced AI to their workplace, giving 40 people access to explore and play with it. It took around four weeks for people to start making use cases. Six months after being introduced, they have over 200 use cases, with 75% of the office using AI. Once people started using AI and gained confidence, they found countless use cases for AI. He mentioned three stages for users of AI. Stage 1: Understanding basic concepts, Stage 2: Refining & Learning from AI, and Stage 3: Expanding your AI applications. All three steps are integral to getting comfortable with AI and using it to help with everyday/repetitive tasks. He also mentioned that the money invested into the specific AI chosen comes back to your workplace –by reducing the time spent on repetitive tasks and, at the same time, keeping billable hours the same, taking dead data off the books, and making things more efficient and correct. He went on to say that these are all ways that can affect the bottom line.

Mr. Weldon was the last presenter of the day. He supported a lot of what Mr. Kearney stated. Mr. Weldon agreed that The University of Glasgow has been resistant to change. He also agreed with the notion that it has a steep history. Lastly, Mr. Weldon concurred that the challenge had a lot to do with how to adopt AI into the University and getting staff to implement it. Mr. Weldon was passionate and excited about how AI can benefit the college. He was so excited that he even had Mr. Kearney fly there to help introduce it to his employees. Mr. Kearney spent time training basic prompts and dealing with simple aspects of AI to staff and worked on streamlining contracts, disclosures, and dead data. What did they find? They spotted partnerships hidden in corporate data, helped find new projects/opportunities for the university from the old data, helped streamline and drastically reduce hours for invention disclosures while keeping the validity of the form intact, and finally, helped with client contract review (a 1-hour process reduced to 10 minutes).

Overall, this webinar was an excellent opportunity to see detailed examples of AI use in the workplace. The webinar also showed that resistance to change was very common. But after giving AI a chance, the possibilities are endless. Finally, the webinar showed that the money will return to your workplace. AI is a worthy venture to explore because AI will be a big part of our workplace future.

ChatGPT is an Ally in Commercialization Efforts

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Posted May 12, 2023 By: Reda El Alami

On May 11^th Foresight attended the AUTM webinar “Generative AI has arrived : Essential Knowledge for TTOs”. The presenters were Dray McFarlane and Thomas Altman, CEOs from the company Tasio. The presenters provided history on AI, and how AI is constantly evolving. AI can be used in a variety of ways: audio to text, image manipulation, and the main focus of this webinar was ‘writing support’. The focus of this presentation was how to get the most out of AI for TTO’s. Specifically, the following 5 ideas that AI can: understand, create, refine, summarize, and translate. The presenters stated they use ChatGPT, created by OpenAI, and how it can act as an “intern” for you. Grant creation was a major focus in the webinar, and how you can create, critique, and regenerate grants. How you can import examples of successful grants so that the chatbot can use that when creating future grants, it can even use your writing style when creating projects, if you submit examples.

The presenters also mentioned that you can utilize the tool for technology scouting and matching. It can identify emerging technologies for commercialization opportunities, analyze patents and market data, and match technologies to industry needs for collaboration. This is not a fully operational tool, it should be fully operational by the end of 2023. If you have a list of patents, market data, or research papers, GPT can run these on a loop in the background and go through every patent that might be relevant, it can filter keywords, and can score the patents based on how you score them, it can help you commercialize patents. This is possible now, it’s again, not 100% ready, but it’s something to start utilizing. The main takeaway from this webinar was to start using ChatGPT in your workday. It’s an extremely useful tool to help make you more efficient and make daunting tasks more streamlined.

Grant writing is less about the writing than the research

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Posted April 27, 2023 By: Reda El Alami

On April 13th, Foresight Science & Technology attended an AUTM Live webinar called TTOs Can be PIs Too: Competitive Grant Application and Management. It was led by Dr. Eva Garland, Dr. Dana Upton, Jennifer Webster, and Ian McClure. This webinar focused on Federal Grant Opportunities, specifically how to prepare grant proposals to get the results you want. The speakers highlighted how to identify a notice of funding opportunity (NOFO), how to collaborate with program officers and project administration offices, as well as how important it was to get supporting documentation to make sure you understand the specific concepts to the grant you are competing for. The speakers have extensive backgrounds in grant applications and funding, and provided great insight on how important it is to forge relationships with the people directly involved in these grants, the funders and people involved in the program. Grant writing is shifting, and it’s important to investigate in more detail, and utilize the resources that are available and listed when reviewing these grants. One can’t simply rely on a generic template to submit bids, in order to win these grants, more time and energy needs to be focused on collaboration to not only win bids, but to gain rapport to help with future bids.

Team Compositions Unpacked and Clarified

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Posted November 14, 2022 By: Reda El Alami

On Oct. 27, 2022 – Foresight attended the PDMA webinar ‘Scatterbrains: Teams find innovation by thinking differently’ by Richard Perez. The webinar consisted of examples and graphs of the make-up of teams at fortune 100 companies and how well they work together. Mr. Perez unpacked and analyzed each member of these teams and categorized them based on defined characteristics and then went on to explain how these categories interact. This information shed some light on individual traits that we don’t always think of when working in team settings. The presentation went on about how to work with members from these categories in order to create synergy and maintain a thriving team model. Overall the webinar was enlightening and interactive as it allowed for members of the webinar to participate in polls and understand where we land within certain team models.

FLC Virtual Meeting- Successful and Engaging in Remote Era

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Posted April 13, 2021 By: Reda El Alami

On April 6 – 8, 2021 Foresight Science & Technology attended the 2021 Federal Laboratory Consortium (FLC) National Meeting which was held in a virtual format. In an increasingly connected, yet remote era the virtual conference was a pleasant and refreshing take on bringing minds together to learn interesting material from industry experts in an inviting format.

The three-day event consisted of several concurring sessions covering topics from ‘T2 for beginners’ to ‘Investment crowdfunding as a tool for T2 initiatives’ and aside from the occasional glitch, the event was well put together and the sessions were properly paced with ample time to answer key questions at the end from attendees.

Hearing from industry leaders and learning trends in specific regions of the country and various labs really made the content interesting as I was not aware that Iowa was seeking to diversify its investments from agriculture to high tech/fin tech; or that North Dakota was becoming a hub for tech funding. Hearing from investors that life science investments are on the rise due to the high risk and extremely high reward on the exit and learning that there is a finite market for tech buyers (ex: phones/computers) but everyone is at one time or another a buyer/user of life science technologies excites investors and compels them to consider riskier investments.

All things considered, the three-day virtual conference was very well done and I would gladly attend any other FLC virtual events in the future.

The rundown on AUTM Asia 2019

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Posted November 14, 2019 By: Konstantin Izvolsky

On November 5-7, 2019 Foresight Science & Technology attended AUTM Asia-2019 conference in Jerusalem, Israel. This conference provided a great platform for technology transfer professionals from Asia to share the best practices and address the challenges related to the transfer of technologies from the university laboratories to the marketplace. Israel, the location of this year’s conference, is known for its high quality of academic research and dynamic innovation ecosystem. The host nation was represented by the large number of attendees from local universities and technology transfer companies. China and Thailand were also represented by large delegations of technology transfer managers and researchers. Interesting discussions were focused on the analysis of best practices in establishing university-based innovation centers and incubators, improving the efficiency of faculty outreach, comparison of alternative business models for academic technology transfer, including Technology Transfer Offices vs. Technology Transfer Companies. As always, part of the AUTM Asia conference was dedicated to technology transfer career development. The conference also addressed the key international events which affect the global collaboration and technology commercialization, including US-China trade war. The last day of the conference included very interesting pitch presentations from several Israeli venture funds and incubators, including aMoon- the largest Israeli life sciences venture fund, LabsO2, VLX and Nextar. The conference offered opportunities for networking as well as social events such as the tour of the Israel ecosystem.

Demystifying Open Innovation- PDMA Webcast

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Posted July 3, 2019 By: Reda El Alami

On June 20^th, 2019 Foresight attended the PDMA webinar Demystifying Open Innovation: Insights from Industry. The agenda consisted of open innovation readiness assessments, roadmaps, and a very informative case study. In order to get the audience on the same page, Dr. Wayne Fisher, Founder of Rockdale Innovation, defined Innovation as the act of “proactively seeking new problems to solve, new ways to solve existing problems, and new ways to implement business building ideas”. In addition he defined Open Innovation as “actively engaging external subject matter experts in the definition of technical problems, identification of potential solutions, and implementation of the best solutions”.

The discussion continued with the Galbraith model, highlighting “what’s important” and “what can go wrong” when installing open innovation in your company, emphasizing the importance of each key element of Organizational Design: Strategy, People, Structure, Rewards, Process; as well as the importance of linking business goals to open innovation projects. As with most product development projects, strong emphasis should be placed on involvement of both the customers and suppliers in all phases of the problem-solving process – problem definition, idea generation, and action planning. We at Foresight always emphasize that it is never too early in your product development process to seek input from your customers, and the same applies to implementation of Open Innovation!

Interested in learning more about Open Innovation? Check out: Open Innovation Essentials for Small and Medium Enterprises. Co-Authored by: Foresight’s Founder, Dr. Phyllis Speser, and VP Business Development, Daniel Satinsky.

Thinking Like “Shark Tank”

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Posted on April 1, 2019 By: Norton Kaplan

I suggest viewing “Shark Tank” https://abc.go.com/shows/shark-tank occasionally to pick up a few hints on how to evaluate and strategize business opportunities and entrepreneur tactics. Most importantly I suggest paying attention to the “Shark Tank” inventor panel members and their questions and comments. I find that each panel member typically focuses on specific pitch/company attributes. For example, I feel that Mark Cuban focuses on the people and resources relative to commitment and drive. Lori Greiner often inquiries about market dynamics and intellectual property. Kevin O’Leary looks for ROI and competition. John Daymond often focuses on supply chain and networking. The others have their own focus.

There is a lot of commonality in how “Shark Tank” is conducted and the work that Foresight does. Sometimes it is pointing out the “elephant in the room.” Highlighted in a Forbes article – “Five Reasons 8 Out Of 10 Businesses Fail” the number 1 reason is that they are Not really in touch with customers through deep dialogue and the number 2 reason is No real differentiation in the market (read: lack of unique value propositions). As Foresight moves forward as a leading commercialization consultancy we all need to look for the evolving needs of our customers and the markets that they are impacting. Foresight is addressing some of these changing needs with products/services like the new SMART Report and the new support program consulting for SBIR/STTR TABA. I look forward to your input on what you are seeing in the companies and markets that you support.

Foresight Trains University on Commercialization

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On December 13 and 14, 2018 Foresight’s Dr. Konstantin Izvolsky, Director of Consulting and Training, and Mr. Norton Kaplan, President, visited the University of South Dakota GEAR Center to provide Commercialization 101 (COMM 101) training to technology transfer office (TTO) staff, faculty, and graduate students. Foresight’s COMM 101 Course is designed to target the broad audiences with the various levels of technology commercialization experience and help TTO staff, faculties and young entrepreneurs to better assess and market the technologies originating in the university laboratories from the conceptual stage to commercialization. The COMM 101 training assists in technology evaluation and identification of commercially viable technologies, defining the value proposition and appropriate application, interactions with potential commercialization partners.

The training was well received by the USD audience. Over two days, participants were actively engaged in discussions covering various aspects of technology commercialization making it interactive and fun experience. Foresight team wishes all the best to out USD friends and is looking forward to providing more commercialization support to USD and other universities in the future!

Confronting Future Challenges in Tech Transfer

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Posted May 29, 2018

Foresight Chair of the Board, Dr. Phyllis Speser, was the closing keynote speaker at the 2018 ASTP Annual Conference in Liege. Her talk focused on future challenges for technology transfer. Noting that most TTOs lose money for their institution or lab, and most technologies never make it to market, she questioned the wisdom of focusing on licenses and revenues as key metrics. She noted that the emphasis on money and licenses distracted attention from social impact, such a reducing illness, mitigating climate change, providing clean energy, and so forth. Social impact, she went on, can be measured in terms of United Nations European Union, and national government priorities. Such an emphasis would allow TTOs and their institution to demonstrate their utility to the public and political decision makers in ways money does not. It would also better align TTO activities with the common perceived mission of a university, government lab, research hospital or non profit lab, namely creation and dissemination of knowledge for the good of all. She encourage the attendees to engage in a thought experiment on their portfolios, looking at how they would manage them differently if maximizing positive social impact and the dissemination of knowledge were their primary metrics. How would it affect how they dealt with student entrepreneurs and educational activities within the university or other institutions? She concluded by looking at potential new models for structuring TTOs given such shifts in priorities.