Today we’re checking out Ready to Commercialize, a conference created by the University of Texas Office of Technology Commercialization. Many of us have pre-conceived notions about entrepreneurs being the guy in the garage trying to work on an idea that is going to revolutionize an industry. But we sometimes forget that right here in our own backyard in Austin, the University of Texas has an incredible number of faculty and graduate students creating new technologies in everything from software to clean energy. The purpose of the commercialization office is to bridge the gap between the academic research and market-ready products.

In most cases, a technology might be seen by a large corporation, and the technology may vastly improve an existing process or method. For example, maybe a quicker or cheaper way to check a blood sample for a specific chemical. The large corporation will license the technology, improve their existing process, and use the technology to reduce costs or create competitive advantage. This is probably the most common licensing scenario.

In a slim minority of cases, a technology coming out of a university is worthy of building an entire business around. This would be the case for Molecular Imprints, for example. Even though these are the minority, they are kind of the “home runs” and they tend to get more press and interest.

At the University of Texas, licensing revenues from such technologies has increased from under $4M in 2003 to $11.5M in the last fiscal year. The benefits of these licensing programs are that they generate funds for the university, they spawn startup companies in Texas, startup companies create new jobs in Texas. Based upon the types of companies that get started, the jobs created are at the high income levels.

Last year, ten startups were formed to commercialize technology from the University of Texas at Austin. Six of those are headquartered in Texas. Over the last five years the OTC has spun out 34 companies, 20 of which were in Texas.

When starting up a company, it’s common to think about and plan all the things you need to build and create. Yet licensing and commercialization is one way to acquire needed technology inexpensively, plus you can acquire it quickly, allowing much better time to market.

The agenda today includes a talk by noted innovator Danny Hillis and Stephen Baker (author of The Numerati).