Software support for TTOs Vladimir Ćirić, Ivan Milentijević, Darko Tasić Faculty of Electronic Engineering University of Niš, Serbia vladimir.ciric@elfak.ni.ac.rs

Outline Technology transfer and software support Conceptual model of technology transfer Software support Users Software components System model User registration strategies Data acquisition and data search techniques System implementation

TEMPUS-1-2009-1-RS-TEMPUS-JPHES 158881-TEMPUS-1-2009-1-RS-TEMPUSJPHES ”National Platform for Knowledge Triangle in Serbia”. http://knowts.elfak.ni.ac.rs/

Technology transfer and software support Technology transfer is a complex multidisciplinary process of technology knowledge transfer Process itself can vary from license transfers to joint investments and risk sharing. Variations in process itself makes a software support a challenging task.

Conceptual model Technology Transfer Offices – TTOs should be able to identify commercial potential of particular technology develop a strategy for technology exploatation

Conceptual model J. Bercovitz, M. Feldman, “Entpreprenerial Universities and Technology Transfer: A Conceptual Framework for Understanding Knowledge-Based Economic Development”, The Journal of Technology Transfer, Springer, Vol. 31, No. 1, 175-188, 2006.

Software support The goals: to promote TTOs, registration of academic users and companies, collecting the data related to the technologies and their commercial potential, collecting the data related to the market potential, support in the estimation of the commercial potential, notification system.

The users Large number of users should be registered, which can be categorized in two types: academic institutions and companies. Large number of users puts the requirement for for designing and implementing automatic user registration process. Registration of academic institutions is easier: the number of the institutions is relatively small the number of the institutions is slowly varying there is a internal hierarchy, which strongly connects institutions together

Users’ roles

System’s components

User registration strategies Academic institutions Initial registration is done by the administrator Invitation system Academic institutions can invite other academic institutions to register Companies Companies will be registered ad-hoc, with addition that the data entered should be verified. Automatic verification is difficult to implement due to the large number of institution types – this task is allocated to the administrator

User registration strategies Academic institutions

User registration strategies Companies

Data acquisition and data search System offers interfaces for following tasks: Technologies submission – technology description submission in the form of offer (academic inst.) i request (companies), Search – data search ability of the system, as an on online service, Delayed matching – specific approach of delayed data search, which describes the ability of the system to notify the event after an arbitrary amount of time.

Data search

System implementation Technologies Server Operating system: Linux Web server: Apache Server-side scripting support: PHP TTO portal PHP/javascript/AJAX

System implementation

Company registration form

Academic intuition view

Administrator view

Concluding remarks Software support for TTOs is designed and implemented. User registration strategy has been developed. The user registration process can be speed-up using proposed registration mechanisms that exploits relations that exists between academic users (authority, initiative, and invitation). Software offers two data search strategies: online search, which requires presence of the user on the system during the search delayed search, which doesn’t require user to be logged-in while it is performed.