Opportunity
The corporate trend to outsource research challenges to universities continues to grow as the downsizing of corporate R&D departments becomes more entrenched. However, universities under the 100M-sponsored research mark (though capable of answering corporate research challenges) are often neglected, for these research partnerships. This is due to their lack of visibility and under-resourced technology transfer operations. Also, the threshold barrier for convincing faculty at lower budget research universities to go through the patent and licensing process, can be somewhat overwhelming, with the immediate need for grant proposals and peer reviewed publishing. For these reasons, the next challenge for these universities is to set up a cost-effective infrastructure for technology creation and transfer that can actively scout and match the needs of the corporate environment to ongoing university research.
