L2M Target Areas

Regulatory and Administrative Improvements

• Technology transfer legislation was written in the 1980s and needs to be updated for the 21st century.
• Inconsistent interpretations of law, regulation, practices, and policies beyond the scope of agencies’ mission-specific differences.
• Inconsistent definition of technology transfer and stakeholder engagement across organizations, and inflexibility in adapting current tools to marketplaces.
• Partnerships not entered into due to unnecessary restrictions in policy, regulation, or statute.
• Leadership, management, or cultural impediments that hinder adoption of best practices.

Private Sector Engagement

• The private sector is a critical player in driving investment, but it can be challenging for them to engage with the Federal government.
• Improved understanding of how federally-funded technologies, knowledge, and capabilities can be made more attractive for private investment, particularly angel and venture capital.
• Improved systems usability so the private sector can find federally-funded technologies and key information (e.g. development stage, IP status) in their area of interest.
• Earlier stakeholder engagement along with market-needs analysis for proposed technologies.
• Increased stakeholder education of how federally-developed technologies and innovations are currently embedded and being used in technologies. 

Entrepreneurial R&D Workforce

• The R&D workforce, including researchers and managers, lacks exposure and knowledge about and incentive to take the steps required in translating research from the lab to the marketplace.
• Conflict-of-Interest or other policies, culture, and processes that inadvertently discourage entrepreneurship or make it difficult to recruit and retain entrepreneurial employees.
• Attitude and resulting culture created by some R&D leaders that the government should not be involved in the commercialization of technology.

Tech Transfer Tools and Services

• Lack of awareness of tech transfer opportunities by the public.
• Private sector doesn’t know what is available nor that they have access to it.
• Correspondingly, agency/lab leadership have limited understanding the value of T2 to the mission.
• Complicated bureaucracy for citizens to navigate in order to engage in tech transfer:
• User experience to find technologies varies greatly by agency and even lab.
• Great diversity in approach for transfer process, agreements (terms & conditions), time frame, etc.
• Uncoordinated management and/or lack of tech transfer tools, services, and supporting infrastructure among Federal agencies. Resulting in:
• Too many duplicative tools and services that exasperate the user’s experience.
• Each set of tools & services only reflect a given agency and/or lab’s assets.
• Suboptimal use of resources and best practices in ‘back shop’ operations and management.
• Want to automate & standardize operations such that T2 SMEs can spend more time on engagement inside and outside Lab

S&T Trends and Benchmarks

• Increased need to demonstrate value of federal research investments to the Nation.
• Identifying metrics that take into account the variety of Agency missions and disciplines.
• Shifting the focus from technology transfer activities to impacts and mission-related outcomes.
• Balancing reporting burdens with measurement needs.