Report Proposes New Statewide Commercialization Effort for Ohio

A new report from the Ohio Board of Regents proposes a statewide commercialization ecosystem to create jobs, promote economic growth and increase wealth in the state. According to the report, recent research suggesting that, when compared to other states, Ohio lags behind in the commercialization of technology. In The Condition of Higher Education in Ohio: Advancing Ohio's Innovation Economy, there are several recommendations to improve the state's technology transfer pipeline to turn academic research into market-ready products and services including:

• Expose Students to co-op/internships — to provide students with real life entrepreneurial experiences, and supported in promoting their intellectual property ideas;
• Expanded tenure review process — to ensure that professors' commercialization activities are recognized in the tenure and promotion processes;
• Open innovation Intellectual Property (IP) Methods — that increase the frequency and sophistication of interaction between seekers and solvers to include advanced data base techniques, marketplaces and possibly IP auctions;
• More exposure to entrepreneurial education — through new curricula, collaboration with corporate partners to offer expanded student internships and cooperative experiences, meaningful business plan competitions and experiential learning opportunities with startup companies at institutions of higher education across the state' and,
• Aligning curriculum to support the needs of industry.

The report was created by the Board of Regents' Technology Transfer and Commercialization Task Force with input from business and higher education leaders, researchers, finance and venture capital representatives, industry CEOs and student intern researchers. Read the report...