Funded by The University of Texas System, UT TRANSFORM (Translational Research Advancement Network to Support, Fund, Organize, Roll-out, and Motivate UT Innovations) program seeks to launch an evolutionary ecosystem to transform University innovations into commercially viable opportunities. The UT TRANSFORM Program is designed to stimulate education in innovation, entrepreneurship, and commercialization; create a platform to identify promising and competitive technologies; and to provide the inventors with an appropriate support network to help develop, seed fund, and commercialize these technologies.
As a member of UT Transform research team, Dorie Gilbert, Director of the Institute for Community Development: US and Abroad at the Center for Social Work Research, is responsible for the development and implementation of a comprehensive survey to assess the capacity for commercialization among UT innovators. The survey will be designed to measure overall entrepreneurial orientation, barriers and motivators for commercialization. Dr. Gilbert will also be responsible for dissemination of entrepreneurial education through seminars, webinars, workshops and presentations at UT campuses, including entrepreneurship boot camps aimed at increasing awareness for entrepreneurship and product development for faculty and students.
Survey measures will include the following:
- Early Measures will include the number of participants, certificates, collaborations, invention disclosures, and seed fund applications.
- Mid-term Measures will include the number of proof-of-principle awards granted, monthly users of online content, downloads, patent applications, new startups, licenses, co-investments into startup companies by third parties, and results from a satisfaction survey of participants in the UT Transform program.
- Long-Term Measures include the number of successful product launches into market, license option fees, upfront fees, and maintenance fees collected from sublicensing technologies to third parties (collected via tech transfer offices), and dollars raised for companies or UT through company exits.
Sponsor: The University of Texas at San Antonio / UT System