Technology Commercialization and Knowledge Transfer Office

Technology Commercialization Office (TCO)
One university transforming the world…

At the Technology Commercialization and Knowledge Transfer Office (TCO) we serve our faculty, researchers, students, and clinicians by turning their inventions, ideas, technologies, and research into business opportunities and products that make an impact in the local and global marketplace.

Submit your invention

Complete one of our disclosure forms below or find more resources for inventors in our tools section

Confidential disclosure form

Confidential software disclosure form

Licensing and Patents

The Licensing and Technology Assessment arm of TCO plays a crucial role in commercialization. Our teams assess, manage, and strategically place technologies into the marketplace while protecting intellectual property through patents or other unique IP protection strategies. They rely on clear milestones, shared interest and responsibility of Inventors to progress technologies forward. TCO actively engages with each college at the University, examining the technology portfolios, leveraging resources, and monitoring follow-on investment as key outcome drivers. Everything we do results in intellectual property we can license. TCO is fast, fair, and we utilize industry standard terms.

New Ventures

The New Venture team at TCO fuses human capital, funding, and technology to create startups. When a new technology is presented to the TCO, New Ventures provides the methodology support, answers, connections, and resources it needs to produce a viable company.

Creating great companies requires great people. With New Ventures – Entrepreneur in Residence program we match CEOs and business executives with TCO to evaluate startup opportunities based on University technologies. This program allows successful entrepreneurs, CEOs and industry experts to participate in taking to market our intellectual property here at Ohio State.

EIR Program Objectives

Assist in identifying startup opportunities, assess those opportunities, provide assistance to formulate preliminary business cases, and help propose business structures for start-up enterprises.
Help to identify at least one University technology that can be commercialized by a start-up company that will be based in and create jobs in Ohio.
Work in conjunction with TCO staff, faculty, industry, investors, economic development groups, and other institutions to identify and develop a business plan to commercialize University technology.
Help develop a deployment plan for the selected University technology.
Provide assistance with a conflict management plan, and help negotiate a license for the technology from the University.
Assist with starting a new company that can execute the business plan and commercialize a licensed technology.
EIR may enter the new startup company as a full time executive with the agreement of the University and the EIR.
After helping to negotiate a license from the University for the technology, writing the business plan, starting the company, and completing a conflict management plan, the EIR will submit the plan to Third Frontier for funding to be eligible for a specified match amount.

Additional New Ventures Capabilities

Resources

Agreement Documents
CEO/Business Lead kit
Inventors Tool Kit

Student Opportunities

Both undergrads and graduate students can find opportunities in the New Ventures group for startup assessment internships. Customer Alignment Startup Training (C.A.S.T.) program is also offered to students every semester.

Startup Snapshot Series

Startup Snapshot is the chance for entrepreneurs, investors, and inventors to interact, connect, and preview a glimpse of Ohio State’s startup portfolio. Technologies span the IT, Life Science, and Physical Science industries. There are four Startup Snapshot events over the course of an academic year. The events begin with an inventor pitch session followed by timed round-robin meetings and discussions between entrepreneurs and inventors.

Ohio 100

The Ohio-100 or O-100 is a select group of Central Ohio’s top 100 entrepreneurs. Every year TCO, along with several sponsors, spearheads a peer-to-peer voting campaign to identify, recognize, and celebrate the top 100 entrepreneurs in the region. These entrepreneurs are the lifeblood of Ohio’s entrepreneurial ecosystem and continue to drive Ohio’s growing startup scene.

Ideation Lab

The Ideation Lab is where ideas are literally brought to life. Design and prototyping experts help an inventor further his or her concept and determine the greatest potential to maximize an invention’s value. The Ideation Lab assists with developing commercial applications through idea generation sessions that empower the “Techperts”, or inventors, to identify and discover innovative trends.

The Shop

The Software Prototyping Team works to create the best prototypes out of Ohio State’s software inventions. They pride themselves on a rapid iteration and a quick turn-around. Informally dubbed “The Shop”, the team continues to work with the wide range of enterprise level and native mobile application software that are disclosed at Ohio State.

Why:

Software needs a strategy. Who uses it, why, and in what way needs to be determined. Leveraging trends and technologies to assist you, The Shop helps take your idea to code with the goal of customer adoption. To start, what’s the strategy?

Startup Strategy includes:

Software Technology Overview and Assessment
Customer Touch Point Analysis
Deep Dive
Proto Approach
Launch Plan

Software Technology Overview and Assessment

The Shop reviews concepts and ideas – we help assess them seeing what they are and what they need to be to go to market. Whether its a mobile app, a web app, thick or thin client, the technology matters less and the customer matters more. What strategy will help take this idea to market? What can scale? What can really work?

Customer Touch Point Analysis

Who’s the customer? Where do they use it and why? How should they use the technology? Identifying customers, their related touch points in the experience of the concept from awareness (brand position) to adoption and usage to how they feel and communicate to others about it. If you know the touch points you understand how users use the concept and grow it.

Deep Dive

A deep dive goes deeper into the ‘why’ behind the technology – what would users do without this technology. A deep dive also analyzes trends today to best help propel the new idea into a tomorrow that will really stick. Some ideas are actually just the start of a much bigger idea, a deep dive can help the team assess whether or not this idea is the ticket or if there’s a bigger play at hand.

Prototype Approach

How should we build this concept? What is the minimum we need to do get traction? Momentum matters more than anything else, you must go faster, what is the plan to conceive the prototype, to build it, to test it and keep it going?

Launch Plan

Once you have something you need to market it, get the word out and analyze your customer’s every move in interacting with it. You need data big time. More data means you “know” whereas before you assumed. A launch plan involves thinking about the proto, the team, the position, the noise you make, who listens and why. What tools to leverage and how to do it under a budget. No one has a blank check here, we need to be scrappy and get traction.

Build it

Why:

So you have a strategy, now you need to build it. Go, faster, now. A prototype is all about envisioning your big idea and getting to conversation FAST. With conversation you get data, you get buy in, you get understanding. This valuable data allows you to iterate quickly and find a path to goodness faster. Building it doesn’t necessarily have to go in the order prescribed below, much of this depends on the budget on hand.

Build it includes:

Sketch & Mockups
Clickable Prototyping
High Fidelity designs
Software Development Plan & Requirements
Data Model
Iterations 1 to 5
User Experience Testing

Launch it

Why:

A prototype needs a launch and now the game really begins. You have a concept, a vision manifested into a working prototype- now we need to launch. In reality, the minute you start, you launch. Perfection is the enemy, you need to start getting consumers into your story from the moment you conceived it.

Launch it includes:

Early Launch Site, A/B Testing and Lead Gen
Analytics & Metrics of Momentum
Art of Noise

Mouseville

Optimized for researchers but accessible for both animal managers and lab administrators, Mouseville is a mobile application for addressing mouse colony management.

Emeritus

Emeritus connects students and educators, encourages participation and enhances interactivity. Instructors can poll classes and take attendance quickly as well as receive real-time feedback. For students, the “Binder” feature provides immediate access and viewing of course materials, one-tap email with class instructor’s addresses, access to course calendars and a mapping tool to assist locating buildings.

Total Horse

Based on an existing Ohio State 4-H product called “Learning Lab Kit” that can be used for competitions in 4-H, FFA, and junior livestock breed association events. This mobile application teaches and tests knowledge of livestock and companion animals in a new, fun and engaging way.

TimeCaT

A web based application developed to support time data capture for time motion studies used in healthcare and service design applications. Features include tracking of multiple users, multitasking, interruptions, inter-observer reliability assessment, task taxonomy, enhanced reporting and raw data output.

Statin Technology

Pharmacogenetic testing algorithms to determine optimum prescription and dosing of cardiovascular therapeutics.

Sinusitis

A medical device for sampling sinuses to distinguish bacterial infections from viral infections.

SimTech World

A surgical and wound care platform. The need for medical simulations for ongoing certification and training as well as medical student instruction is on the rise. The platform is conceived as two primary business units. One unit is the fabrication and assembly of the simulation components based on synthetic alternatives to biological systems; skin, blood vessels, bone, blood, moulage kits and the heart. The second business unit is comprehensive simulations. The first patented model is a device that allows a student to practice when and how to use capillary refill when assaying a pediatric patient. Currently there is no device that teaches capillary refill.

Personalized Spine

Developed by Dr. William Marras, PSA is a service that conducts an analysis of an individual’s spinal condition and provides feedback for successful treatment. The analysis is based off past medical history, MRI, CAT scan, and other pertinent test results that show target problem areas in the patient’s spine. This information is then used to decide upon a plan of action for the patient that is forecasted to produce the best results.

Readiness Analytics

A software assessment platform for risk management, The Readiness Test allows organizations to prepare for disasters both man and nature made. The tool calculates a “recoverability confidence index” that benefits a business’ financial, logistic and compliance operations. This measurement is a compliance component of the newly released 2012 International Standard for Societal Security, ISO 22301.

nSpire

A Secure Platform for an Integrated Resource Environment) nSPIRE serves to: 1) provide an online basis for any academic based software and includes data management, secured data/connections, and user-interface (UI) elements modeled from popular social media. 2) implement the VITALS-CMS (Vital Information for Teaching And Leading Scholars - Curriculum Management System) curriculum management system which is capable of creating databases that manages nearly all aspects of education curriculum (including student information/performance, course structure, educational content, and reporting methods), but the system specializes in student-driven and competency-based implementations.

Monochromatic X-Rays

A novel invention that utilizes a monochromatic X-ray that implements the methodology of resonant nano-plasma theranostics for imaging, therapy and diagnostics in cancer research. This invention implants a nanoparticle such as a heavy element into a tumor cell that allows the X-ray to be set at the specific frequency of that element in order to retrieve a clearer image of the target. Benefits include less radiation exposure and reduced energy consumption.

HAWC

According to the US Energy Information Administration, in 2010 the total consumption of electricity was about 3,884 billion kWh. Out of that total electric use, nearly 9% was for water heating and 22% was for air conditioning. With the introduction of air conditioning in developing countries like China and India, worldwide electricity usage from cooling systems is increasing exponentially. HAWC combines heat pumps with desiccant dehumidification enabling the development of hybrid cooling, hot water, and ventilation systems with improved functionality and reduced energy consumption.

EM Probe

A novel cancer detection device that detects differences in electromagnetic activity between cancerous and non-cancerous tissue in vivo and in vitro by producing an image displayed on a computer. The probe can be handheld and battery powered. It is safe for both the healthcare professional and the patient because it does not require use of radioactive tags.

MRE

A significant improvement on the current commercially available pneumatically-driven MRE system and allows for the imaging of smaller organs such as the heart, spleen, prostate, pancreas, etc., in addition to larger organs such as the liver. This new driver system consists of a hydraulically powered actuator which will provide excitation to the surface of a patient in the MRI environment. This technology will enable MRI centers to increase utilization of their MRI system and widen its applications to include identification of patients with affected soft tissue stiffness that is indicative of certain disease states.

SimpleFill

Simple, efficient, natural gas compression and filling technology for at home end user consumption.

Accelematics

Accelematics combines distributed data management and query use cases with an easy to deploy, extensible, and high-performance informatics platform for healthcare applications. The system can aid researchers in discovery, retrieval, and integration of data and knowledge sources related to their research from multiple systems, often across multiple institutions, with a single query.

Curio

Curio is an educational content publishing platform that enables content experts to become entrepreneurs.

Mindful Management

Mindful Management is a comprehensive wellness firm that specializes in Mindfulness-Based Interventions specifically designed for the workplace. The company’s premier Mindfulness-Based Intervention, Mindfulness in Motion: Stress Reduction for Busy Adults, was developed by Dr. Maryanna Klatt at The Ohio State University College of Medicine. Mindfulness in Motion is a research-based program that offers pragmatic resiliency tools that can be easily implemented in the workplace to enhance employees’ well-being and functionality while mitigating the effects of chronic stress.

Ohio State Navbar

Faculty & Staff

Confidential Invention Disclosure

Confidential Software Invention Disclosure

Students

Submit an Idea

Community

Our Process

Technology Commercialization Office (TCO) One university transforming the world…

Submit your invention

Licensing and Patents

New Ventures

Additional New Ventures Capabilities

Resources

Student Opportunities

Startup Snapshot Series

Ohio 100

Ideation Lab

Ideation: Bringing Knowledge to Life

The Shop

Software Strategy

Why:

Startup Strategy includes:

Software Technology Overview and Assessment

Customer Touch Point Analysis

Deep Dive

Prototype Approach

Launch Plan

Build it

Why:

Build it includes:

Launch it

Why:

Launch it includes: