Just Having the Technology Isn't Enough, the Word from South Carolina

Various entities within South Carolina are looking at improving the transfer of technology into startups and new products. Technology transfer involves the spread of university or government research discovery to the commercial sector and promotes the knowledge-based economy. It also includes the way research-generated intellectual property is commercialized through technology licenses or spin-offs of new venture startups.

Since the institution of the Bayh-Dole Act in 1980, universities can own, negotiate and transfer publicly funded intellectual property to private companies for exploitation and business profitability. As a result, universities have created a wellspring of marketable technology to stimulate an emerging knowledge-based economy

Nationally, 80% of startup companies that start from university funding grow around the area of their university, including San Diego, Boston and Austin, Texas. But, say South Carolina officials, “that isn’t true here.

“Technology is not enough to start a company. First, startups need access to capital that is not risk averse—that’s why the creation of the Angel Partnership and the Venture Capital Act is so important. Secondly, we need an environment that supports entrepreneurs, where people have general understanding of technical fields, accountants and lawyers who understand the maintenance and management of big companies versus a high-risk startup company. And we need facilities with lab space.”

Technology transfer agreements help assure that university professors realize value from their invention, discovery or research. “We need to help our professors at our state universities with the monetary aspect of taking that technology development on their university campus and marketing that to the public or a business,” says Thomas Persons, acting chairman of the South Carolina Technology Alliance in Columbia.

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