research management

Technology transfer job scheduling for universities

Introduction
job scheduling weekly and daily assignments

job scheduling weekly and daily assignments the old fashioned way

This study describes the development of a novel job scheduling tool for university technology transfer using simulated annealing in R-programming. Technology commercialization managers often face training inventors on intellectual property (IP) laws and IP policies. They also evaluate invention disclosures for patentability and marketability. In addition, they draft and implement invention marketing plans. Further, they work closely with patent counsel on patent prosecution. Expediency is important. The amount of time taken to evaluate invention disclosures and file patent applications often conflicts with inventors’ desire to publish findings. Yet, very few technology transfer managers use project management job scheduling tools to minimize processing time.

Importance of Job scheduling

Job scheduling is crucial because it has the potential for improving staff accountability and trust between the TTO staff and faculty. However, TTO staff that value their academic freedom and autonomy may resist the use of job scheduling tools. A description of experimentation follows and the test results is provided. The discussion provides the primary implication for technology managers.  The job scheduling tool schedules technology transfer tasks quite easily and speedily with this proposed job scheduling tool. I scheduled a hypothetical set of TTO staff job tasks that did not include faculty inventor tasks. These are study limitations. Thus, future research should include further experimentation in actual university technology transfer offices using the job tasks in real time.

Findings

In short, I found fascinating discoveries through experimentation. Simulation annealing is an advanced optimization tool. University technology transfer job scheduling is ideal for this. The meta-heuristic simulated annealing program converges to an optimal solution that satisfied the constraints. As it happens, the use of simulated annealing for job scheduling statistically guarantees finding an optimal solution (Ingber, 1993).  In conclusion, the job scheduling tool experimentation illustrates the use of advanced optimization to schedule TTO staff job tasks in a very quick and simple manner.

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Promote your Academic Research

Introduction

In this video, I give you some ideas about how promote your academic research. The motivation for this presentation is I attended the Academy of Management conference in Chicago. I attended a faculty development workshop and paper development workshop for hosted by the Social Issues and Management Division. And some international scholars shared that their universities give credit to scholars for the impact of promoting their research, do social media marketing. Now, that was pretty neat!! When measuring performance with respect to scholarly impact, leaders don’t just go by your citations. When scholars are citing your work, they go by total impact of your marketing and promotion effort in getting the word out about your research. So, I thought that was pretty cool!! And I started researching ideas for promoting my own research. And I just want to share some of that with you.

 

About Dr. Clovia Hamilton – got started in AI

So, here’s a little bit about my background. Research promotion has a lot to do with search engine optimization. I am by no means an expert SEO. But I have been in this space a very long time- – since way back in the 1980s. I was a research assistant for the US Army Corps of Engineers in Champaign IL. I worked on the development of expert system knowledge management tools. The idea was, we would capture the information that our experts knew about the construction army barracks and other military facilities before they retired. This would help more junior engineers learned from the experienced engineers.

This is why social media marketing and search optimization interests me. And since 2005, I’ve been very active in social media marketing. I’m a patent attorney. And I went on to work for the US Patent and Trademark Office and learn how to you know what to do about reviewing patents for patentability. Then I went on to the US EPA’s National vehicle and emissions lab in Ann Arbor Michigan.

Had fun joining the Academy way back in 1999 in research administration as a technology commercialization specialist. And I started publishing law articles back then. I was not a faculty member. I was on an administrative side. Did a short stint as an assistant professor at East Carolina University and then started consulting. Unfortunately, I abandoned my research but used social media marketing when I was consulting to attract clients. So, I’m a fan of search engine optimization.

Importance of social media marketing

I also want to share a quick story about that experience, because my colleagues at Georgia Tech were naysayers about social media marketing. They didn’t want to have anything to do with being active online, to promote our work in our activities. For the work that I was doing at Georgia Tech, I was in a government contracting space. And but I’ll share a quick story with you. We had an event in Albany, Georgia, at the Civic Center, we call this speed partnering, where we hit small businesses.

We’re trying to partner them with government agencies for government contracts. I was real active in social media. And through Twitter, and networking on Twitter, I was able to get Fox News, interested in the event and they sent camera crew down. And we got a lot of news press and coverage and interviews and all kinds of wonderful things, all because of dialogue on Twitter. So, I’m a huge fan, because it’s just really fast and quick, you’re not picking up the phone, trying to figure out who to talk to and play some phone call or send out emails and not get a response. Social Media Marketing is the way to go.

Getting cited

When I re-entered the Academy as an Assistant Professor at Winthrop University, I didn’t have very many citations. I only had 25 cites. Now, Google recognizes 70 and I have found about 100. When you get cited by other authors, that’s evidence of making an impact and joining scholarly conversations. So, I’m kind of proud of my little numbers and I want to share some of the ideas that I’ve come across and some of the things that seem to be working.

 

Brand Identity

The first step is, I would say you need a brand identity to promote your academic research. The very first step is “know thyself”. Start by answering: Can you define research agenda? What do you stand for? How about the purpose of your research? Why are you conducting research? My research is focused on how to improve technology commercialization operations. This is related to inventions and marketing and promoting and licensing inventions, which is my background and patenting. Also research how to increase diversity and technology commercialization by addressing some social issues and Technology Management. And some of the social issues

The next step is that you need to start curating content that’s related to your brand identity. This is content that you would share with people in your network online. So, I get a lot of news feeds that come to my email address, my personal email address. And I’m signed up with a lot of listservs to trade organizations. I read these for an hour each morning. If I come across some interesting articles, I’ll share them with friends in Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. That’s the name of the game!  Share!!

Don’t just use how promote your research. You’re also being a part of the conversation about what’s going on in your research area. For example, I get from the American Society of Engineering Education (ASEE). They’ve been covering Chinese intellectual property piracy quite a bit which is an area that I’m interested in.  I collect these. I can use them in my research papers and share with others that are interested.

The third step is, of course, you want to write research papers. But you want to write your papers with Search Engine Optimization (SEO) in mind. Be very careful about keywords that you select. Use tools like Google Trends.

Learn much more by watching the video!

Chinese innovators technology transfer job insecurities

Introduction
Chinese innovators in research lab

Chinese innovators

This research focuses on Chinese innovators technology transfer and perceived insecurities. The focus is on perceived job insecurity among university faculty researchers and technology transfer office (TTO) staff working with Chinese colleagues. As it happens, university technology transfer is growing in China. This is vital to China’s innovation and intellectual property program. This article provides a literature review used to create a theoretical framework for explaining conflicts between university technology transfer participants. Certainly, economic development and business competitiveness rely on innovation and intellectual property generation. Given increased investments in university research and Chinese universities, it is important to be aware of conflicts between university technology transfer office staff and faculty. Conflicts between university technology transfer participants can thwart efforts to create thriving, successful university technology innovation and commercialization programs.

Job Insecurity

This article provides a literature review which defines insecurity as perceived threats felt by both the faculty researchers and TTO staff.  From this literature review, I developed a theoretical conceptual framework and hypotheses to explain this phenomenon. This article examines the top impediment to faculty researchers’ engagement in the process: faculty indifference, ideological resistance, poor discoveries, limited TTO budget, bad TTO reputation, and university bureaucracy (Markman, 2005).

Other impediments examined are lack of trust in the process, delays, and building and guarding research collaboration funding relationships. Further, concerns exist among non-tenured faculty researchers. In addition, this article also examines the theoretical framework for the study of job insecurity related to university technology transfer. Job insecurity is a perceptual phenomenon (Sverke, 2002, Greenhalgh, 1984). This is an affected distress in alignment with stress theory. Stress theory teaches that the anticipation of a fundamental and unwanted event leads to strain (Sverke, 2002).

Conclusion

In summary, this research focuses on job insecurity among university faculty researchers and technology transfer office (TTO) staff. This study is very important to the field of university technology transfer because job insecurity can lead to reduced work effort, propensity to leave, and resistance to change (Greenhalgh, 1984). Personality, motivation, social exchange, social network, power dominance, worker resistance, and communication theories are discussed. Notably, a theoretical conceptual model of the phenomenon is also provided and discussed. Fourteen (14) related propositions are presented. This is groundwork for a future empirical study to test this theoretical concept for Chinese innovators technology transfer.

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University Technology Transfer conflicts Love and Hate

Introduction
love and hate as options in a checklist with love chosen by a gentleman

University technology transfer conflicts stem from job insecurity

This research examines university technology transfer conflicts related to the love and hate between research faculty and technology transfer staff. We attempt to provide greater understanding of how research faculty’s personal values and research universities’ organization values may differ and why. Faculty researchers and tech transfer office (TTO) staff are perceived to be virtuous agents. When both are meeting each other’s needs, a “love” relationship exists. However, when these needs are not met, a “hate” relationship exists that is replete with doubt and uncertainty. Thus, this doubt and uncertainty create tension and subsequent conflicts.

Ethical concerns

There are many accounts where faculty researchers have not followed university policies and expectations. They often violate policy and ethical standards. Likewise, faculty report numerous examples of how TTO staff members’ negligence in servicing their attempts to be good institutional citizens have failed them. Thus, this paper explores this love/hate relationship and reveals numerous conflicts that call into question ethical concerns.

Conflict Management

This article provides a set of recommendations for reducing and potentially alleviating university technology transfer conflicts. Results from a thorough review of the literature on the relationship between faculty and university TTOs reveals that perceived job insecurity is underway. Some research faculty members as well as some TTO staff, unethically violate their university policies. Violations include faculty not disclosing inventions disclosures and the staff selection to not provide full services. There are ways to alleviate the conflict between faculty’s personal values regarding their inventions and university’s organizational values. There is a need to enact measures that build trust and reduce insecurity.  We not only examine this faculty/TTO staff ethical conflicts, but we offer a set of recommendations. In summary, we believe these recommendations will reduce the likelihood of unethical behavior. They encourage greater institutional commitment and trust.

Read the paper here…