Access to resources is often a critical challenge for entrepreneurs. So what would you say if you could tap into the cutting-edge work going on in some 600 R&D labs with an aggregate annual budget of $21.6 billion?
Welcome to your taxpayers' dollars at work. Much of the country's technological innovation is taking place in federal laboratories, which operate at the behest of parent agencies including the Department of Defense, NASA, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture. And the R&D work done here encompasses everything from improving cotton growth to developing technology that helps people with disabilities.
Here's the opportunity for entrepreneurs: These labs, for the most part, are not charged with commercializing their ventures but, thanks to legislation in the 1980s, can partner with private companies to bring the inventions to market.
Technology Transfer for Entrepreneurs describes how entrepreneurs can find, evaluate, and do business with government labs, and provides success stories. (More such stories would have been helpful.) Strategies are presented for developing alliances and conducting cooperative research with the federal entities. A particularly helpful nuts-and-bolts chapter offers advice from technology managers on how to do business with labs.
At the core of the book is a model for transferring government lab work to the private sector. The best news, the authors say, is that technology transfer laws favor small businesses.—Sean Silverthorne