iBridge Networks: Escape the tech transfer office
February 2, 2007
One does not have to spend more than a few seconds a day on Techmeme to know about the DEMO conference. As stated on the DEMO website, the conference is “the premier launch venue for new products, technologies and companies.” The majority of the companies showcasing their products at DEMO this year would be classified as classic web 2.0 companies (video, social networks, web office, etc). However, there was at least one oddball on the group. Via the Science Commons blog, I got to learn about the iBridge Network (wish they had chosen a different name), an organization that was formally launched at DEMO.
So what is the iBridge Network? As their own “about” page states
The iBridge Network, a program of the non-profit Kauffman Innovation Network, Inc., provides the transparency and access to university developed innovations that will lead to further advances and next-generation products. The Network aggregates research materials, technologies, and discoveries in an online, easy-to-search forum—the iBridge Web Site. Innovations on the Web site range from biological cell lines to animal models to computer technologies. The range is vast and the possibilities are endless.
So in essence, the network provides a forum for academic researchers to make their innovations accessible to others, including entrepreneurs, and attempts to make the entire academic tech transfer process a lot smoother. According to the marketing materials only about $1 billion out of the $40 billion spent on academic research make it out of universities as inventions. The network provides entrepreneurs, commercial entities and other researchers access to the long tail of academic research, and hopefully some sort of payoff . There are open interfaces between the network and university licensing systems, which makes the whole licensing process a lot easier (the company calls this the sites e-commerce features). The organization is a member of the Science Commons Materials Transfer project. The model is quite appealing and I plan to watch closely, since one would hope this effort can really facilitate the commercialization of quality research and provide companies and entrepreneurs with an excellent resource to find appropriate technologies.
The iBridge Network website is rather nice, featuring many web 2.0 features, including an excellent search engine, tag clouds, quality browsing, etc.. The descriptions of the innovations, from top notch universities, are well organized and clearly written. The first link in the biomedical category is for imaging nanoparticles, I suspect the kind developed by Dr. Sam Wickline. A search for “therapeutic” yields 66 entries, including compounds for cancer therapy from Cornell. For more, take a look at the demo, which although not as good as some of the other ones does what it’s supposed to.
Further Reading:
Open source science as an innovation model
Technorati Tags: iBridge Networks, DEMO, Science Commons, Tech Transfer, Innovation
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May 13, 2007 at 10:52 pm
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