Technology Transfer & Licensing Are Now Integral to Rapid Technology Deployment, Adoption and Organizational Transformation

The speed of technological change is unparalleled, and technology transfer and licensing are increasingly integral to this. The impact of technology on how businesses run, how services are performed, and how prospects and customers are serviced is changing dramatically. Many firms are inventing their technologies and products, while many are licensing technologies from others in the commercial or university sectors, as example, and some are buying or merging with other firms for the competitive value and edge the acquisition or merger has. The need is broad, and the basic requirement fairly consistent: rapid time to market and enhancing corporate capability.

Every new technology/product is transformational -- it changes the organization in one way or another, from how it handles its information technology to the skill sets needed in marketing and sales. Looking at social media/marketing for example, a Gartner group report indicated that By 2015, social marketing processes will influence at least 80% of consumer’s discretionary spending.

But while this statement could stand on its own, the underlying web of social media tools and sites, and their ancillary tools to support services, is an ever-increasingly complex mesh of inter-connected sites that upload data from one to another, share information, and create a complex series of decisions to be made in the approach to social media marketing. All of this will affect how companies will, or attempt to, tap into that 80% of discretionary spending as well as the normal sales/revenue they currently enjoy. Gartner also noted that lead management campaigns would be integrated into four or more digital channels and dramatically outperform firms with only one or two channels. This creates other challenges for marketing: not all digital sales channels are the same, and some are meshed with others.

This also tied to customer relationship management which will significantly affect how companies do business, with a pronounced increased in sales/source analytics. It’s been obvious for some time, but if you are not into web-based services, especially on mobile phones/devices, you will lose market share and revenue. Academia is now encouraging the development of mobile apps internally with an eye to both license and directly markets them.

Blogging is now a key tool in both institutional and product marketing, as another example, for companies and people alike. And even in this very large niche, there is a maturing protocol for maximizing effectiveness and that protocol changes with the advent of new tools and capabilities, services, and delivery platforms.

Simply put, companies are in a constant and dynamic change mode now, certainly more than ever before and this is just the portent of things to come. The pace will increase, not decrease. Past changes in movement to just-in-time manufacturing, group (or aggregation) purchasing and so many other manufacturing, distribution and logistics areas will pale in comparison to the future. I recently referred to this as a speed chess game played at the speed of light.

Firms will be facing other upside and downside challenges as well, among them being the following:

1. Upside: Change of firms `systems/services development models for speed and improved time to market, and need for more comprehensive system testing given the range of delivery platforms for the end item

2. Upside: More future thinking about what is needed next downstream and the rapid and earlier development and emergence of pre-emptive competitive barriers which themselves can cause speed up of the cycle as competitors react in any given market

3. Downside: Increased instances of false and misleading information which can affect sales, e.g., people giving a thumbs up or down on a product they never used just to be a nuisance, or as the result of a friend’s or the general public`s reaction or comments.

4. Downside: Increased exposure to or risk of negative events as the result of cyber-attacks.

There are many others, but in essence, none of these speaks directly to the basic business efficacy or viability which must remain paramount. They speak to maintaining a technological presence and capability to sustain themselves which then supports their viability.

Technological change and corporate transformation for better products, profitability, stakeholder value, etc. are critical. But in today`s technologically-centric world, they have to be planned and managed with greater precision and forethought than before. It boils down to good planning, and clear-headed thinking, not clouded by the latest and greatest that might - or might not even - apply to you regardless of whether you are a product/service company, channel partner/supplier or customer.