North Carolina State University's Office of Technology Transfer is piloting an advanced analytics tool it developed with IBM to maximise its return on research investments. The "Big Data" effort can work for any enterprise looking to mine rich databases of information with limited staff resources.

NC State had a challenge. It needed a new process to monetise its treasure trove of scientific advancements and university-invented technologies by matching these with potential research partners and sponsors. Any organisation sitting on reams of intellectual property (IP) will learn from the experiences of Billy Houghteling, Director of the Office of Technology Transfer at NC State. His office is responsible for transferring University-developed innovations to the marketplace and interacting with partners. "Our portfolio is very large, very diverse and it's understaffed," says Houghteling. "We have a hard time managing the intellectual property assets we have."

There are seven licensing professionals (including Houghteling) in the department and they are managing some 3,000 technologies. In addition, there are 12 support professionals in the department.

"Not only are we charged with managing the university's intellectual property assets, we're also charged with raising whole profile of technology in NC State," says Houghteling. "So we are always thinking about what type of research partnerships we  could establish between an industry partner and faculty member in, say, our department of chemistry, for example."

The most time-consuming part of the process is what Houghteling's team calls "triage," in which the licensing professionals review an opportunity to determine market potential, investigate the patent landscape, and, if necessary, seek patent protection in order to move early-stage technologies to market. This triage process typically takes two to four months, and much of that time is spent on the back end trying to identify the right partners in a particular industry so they can be pitched on the project, explains Houghteling.

For the triage process, the licensing professionals search a plethora of documents, scour SEC reports, search blogs to see which company's R&D efforts are successful and which have failed, attend industry trade meetings and do anything else required "to really get a handle on who is interested in any given technology," says Houghteling.

IBM Big Data Pilot
This summer, the department began piloting IBM's "Big Data" analytics technology, which mines large amounts of unstructured Web data. The analysis is based on factors such as business relevancy, government policies, market needs and trends. In the pilot phase, the tools unearthed hidden business opportunities that likely would not have emerged under the old triage system, notes Houghteling. In addition, the analytics tools condensed the triage process down to a seven- to 10-day period. "We do this by identifying key words, using specific phrasing dedicated to key words, and by identifying specific documents," Houghteling says. "You can get these types of analytics tools to spit out a scored or ranked list of potential partners. That's attractive: to have a group of potential partners ranked based on how they match to our specs."

For example, a team of researchers at NC State is investigating new strains of Salmonella for use in vaccines. With IBM Big Data analytics technology, it took less than a week for the university to analyze 1.4 million Web pages, including opinion blogs, social networks and documents. The analytics technology sorted through a wide variety of information and analysed the contents in real time to find relevant details, ultimately identifying potential investors and partners.

The pilots were conducted in collaboration with the university's College of Management Bioscience Management Group and its Centre for Management Studies. For this project, NC State used:

IBM BigSheets, part of IBM’s BigInsights portfolio, a software engine that helps get insights from really large data sets easily and quickly IBM Language Ware, a text analytics tool created by IBM's Dublin Software Lab in Ireland for harnessing the wealth of unstructured data contained in text documents, Web site content and enterprise applications.

IBM Cognos Content Analytics, a software which gives organisations the necessary tools to access and analyse the volumes of unstructured content.

These three components were running on IBM Distribution of Apache Hadoop. The analytics solution interfaced with the University's TechTracS database, developed by Knowledge Sharing Systems. The proprietary database supports innovation management functions and is used by the technology transfer offices of many universities to manage their IP portfolios. "It has its base modules that we have customised for our use at NC state," says Houghteling. "We license use of several seats of the TecTracS software and, in partnership with Knowledge Sharing Systems, we pay for process improvements particular to our processes and practices. “The relational TechTracS database is used for all the agreement tracking, invention disclosure tracking, compliance, and patent management for the University. It is also from that database that the department launches  all of its marketing activities to potential partners.

In the pilot phase, the interface between the IBM Big Data solution and the transfer management database went smoothly, and Houghteling says "I don't foresee any challenges related to transferring information gathered by use of analytics tools into  our transfer management database."-

Business Benefits Realised
So far, the IBM Big Data pilots delivered two strong benefits, says Houghteling:

• They reduced the triage process down to seven to 10 days from two to four months;
• The licensing professionals are now able to use their newfound time to work on raising the university's technology profile and building new business opportunities.

As the pilots continue, "We're definitely in the process of making the business case [ for a full deployment]." Says Houghteling, "It's only a matter of time before these tools become available to every member of my office to test and see how they improve their daily flow of work and efficiency."

This article has been published with prior permission from CIO Insight.