Speaker 1  0:01  
And now I will introduce our distinguished speaker, Dr. Richard Cahoon has been a technology transfer professional for nearly four decades. He was director of Cornell's PTO for 20 years. He has been an international IP tech transfer consultant for the past 10 years. Dr. Cohn advises individuals, companies, institutions, and governments in his practice. He's the director of a multi year tech transfer capacity building program for the World Intellectual Property Organization. He teaches IP management at Cornell. And Dr. Carson leads numerous IP management, and threat tech transfer on site workshops around the world, as well as online webinars, short courses and roundtables. At this time, I'll turn it over to our speaker. Welcome, Richard.

Speaker 2  0:53  
Thank you, Holly, and welcome to those of you who are attending this webinar. I don't know if there's one of you out there, or 10,000 of you. But I'll just in my mind, one or two of you are sitting in my living room. And we'll just have this informal conversation. I wanted to give you a little bit of context about this subject and why I'm excited to present it today. There are really two salient events in my life that led to me diving into the subject, and then trying to teach it. And the first one, the kind of bookend, the first one took place when I was in my mid 20s, early, mid 20s, I had gotten a bachelor's degree. And I had my first job as a chemist. And I decided to take some extra classes. And I took a class in what was called though the department was called educational psychology. And the class was called efficient reading. I'd heard about speed reading, and I thought that was probably not a bad idea for someone who was going to make a living by reading things. So I took this class efficient reading. And yes, in fact, they did teach a certain amount of speed reading, and efficient reading. But what they taught was something I had never been taught before. And that was the, the process of, of understanding how one learns. And if you understand how you learn, you have to understand how you think. And so it just opened up this whole realm for me of understanding how I learn and how I think and this was, when I was in my late 20s, I already gotten or my early 20s, I'd already gotten my first bachelor's degree and had my first professional job. And I realized, looking back that I had been a very solid B student, I very carefully made sure I reliably got B's, I never got hardly ever got C's, didn't get too many A's, because season A's were problematic. Bees are comfortable. So I got bees. And that's how I managed to get through college. This class opened up my my mind to my mind. And I began to realize that I was not really utilizing my, by the power that I had, and that we all have. So I took it very seriously. And I really became excited about the idea of learning about learning, learning about thinking, I then went back I got so excited, I went back and got another bachelor's degree in a year. And it just seemed like anything that I tackled intellectually became really easy. I became a straight student, I never got anything but A's after that, and that included I went on got a master's degree, later a PhD and I, my mind was something that always used to amaze me how capable I was and it was all because I had this this experience of learning about learning and learning about thinking. So now the other key event that took place, roll the tape ahead several decades. I had raced through my professional career and I had a lot of success. It was a has been really a very satisfying and successful career. And I do a lot of teaching. These days, I do a lot of workshops, to tech transfer professionals. And I teach a lot of the basics. And we'll talk about that I talked about the basics. You You guys know it well. You know, IP, management, triage and selection, outreach, marketing, contracts, negotiation, all the things that the skills that we all need to know and use to be good at this. So I teach that and I've been teaching this in one way or another, quite frequently. I have hundreds of, of those who have attended my workshops and my lectures. One day, it occurred to me that I was teaching over and over and over the skills, and it and it hit me that one of the things that made me successful was that I had an a way of thinking about the profession, I had a way of thinking about the process. Going back to what I learned about thinking and, and learning, I realized that I had been bringing that something special to my profession. And that I really wasn't teaching it, I was referring to it and anecdotes, probably scattering different thoughts about it all throughout my my presentation. But I had never systematically tried to capture this and teach it. And so about a year and a half ago, I decided that I would try to do that. And so I embarked on an effort to really articulate this. And using a number of different as you'll see, I'll talk about these different resources that I've used over the years more and more, using them recently, about using your mind as a tool and realizing that your mind really is this powerful tool. And that tech transfer is like the perfect opportunity to use that special tool. Now, I suspect you all are doing it in one way or another probably really successful. And so keep it up. And all I can hope to do today is maybe give you a nugget here or there, or maybe something to think about that maybe can improve your, your own performance. And and also, I think it's also a path to just happier existence on this on this planet. So here's the here's my then effort to try to articulate this. And to give you some solid things to think about in terms of how you can use this idea of mindset. Okay, so what I'm going to talk about today, we're going to just skim over the essential skills of the T to professional because you all know what those are. And as I say, as much as I love to teach that I mean, I there's so many subjects that I love to go at depth and I enjoy teaching it in different ways I really enjoy people bringing different learning approaches to my workshops. But I'm not going to really talk about that towards the end, I'm going to talk a little bit about some of the things that we do some of our skills, and I'm going to weave that in with this basic topic of the way you think. So we're going to talk about at length about mindset. We're going to talk about what it is and why it's so important. And what a mindset for success is. And then we're going to talk a little bit about whether or not you can change your mind and this has been one of the the really fun and exciting and pleasant things I've I've learned as I've been delving even more and more over the past, say five years, Refining methods, refining my own thinking about my thinking and learning that you can improve. And I one thing I will just say referring back to that class that I took an inefficient, inefficient reading. Once I learned how to think about my thinking in an objective way, I realized that I was using practically you know, hardly any of the power that my mind has in your mind y'all have and once I learned how to start to do that, I became a lot smarter. Hello. So I now teach my students here at Cornell, I teach a course in IP management.

Speaker 2  10:08  
And one of the things we now do, we add a couple of lectures on learning, and how to think about learning and thinking about your thinking. So we'll talk about how you can change your mind. And then we're going to end with the attitude for success. In my opinion, this is based upon my own 40 years of doing this, I've done a lot of it. But I'm, you know, I know I'm not the only one, everybody has their own style, and you have your own style. And of course, that's your challenge is to refine your style, and make it the best as it can be. I will talk a little bit about developing a vision for technology. At the very end, I'm going to mention this concept of developing a vision. It's something that I came at, sort of naturally, and I realize a lot of people, folks that I teach about commercialization, and technology transfer, don't come at it naturally. So I again, tried to take what I know, and how I've done it, and to try to articulate it and explain that to you. And you can hopefully find something useful there. So essential skills, let's skim over this successful tech transfer professional has to have knowledge and understanding of science and technology, got to know business and the commercialization process. And you know, each of us has our own strengths and weaknesses. But I think all of us to be successful, you have to have at least some basic knowledge and appreciation for these different areas, you have to have a familiarity with the intersection of science, technology and business embodied in r&d, product development and market development. You need to be comfortable at the intersection of science, technology, Law and Business intellectual property contracts, I'm not telling you anything you do not already know, an in depth understanding of IP, its creation, management youth, I spend a lot of time teaching people how to do this at a really deep level how to analyze inventiveness or non obviousness and how to look at an invention of visa vie the prior art, and how to use that then to build your first of all, to decide whether you're going to pursue it and then decide what your commercialization strategy is going to be. Obviously, solid understanding this intersection of invention and patent claims and understanding where an invention best fits in the value chain contract. Some of us like doing contracts more than others. But all of us need to have a comfort level with some comfort, comfort level with negotiating, drafting, and crafting our the contracts that are relevant to our profession. You all know that tech transfer is unique. And in this context of this mental world that I'm talking about today, tech transfer is I think, amazing. And I know there's other professions in which it's similar in the richness of the of the intellectual content and the complexity. But I don't, I don't think there's any that's, that's more complex and more rich and more interesting. So we have all these different domains. We have science and technology, law, business, psychology, politics, organizational dynamics, I'm sure you could add a couple. And And under each of these particular domains, there's subcategories. So it's, it's, it's a lot for our minds to, to grapple with. But what I have learned is that this creates this really extraordinary mental environment. And you probably know this, but I've been around long enough to realize that the people who get good at this are some of the most interesting and pleasant people to be around. Your colleagues are fantastic, because we have all been swimming in this extraordinary mental environment. And if we've managed to survive it, because some don't, something transformative happens to us. I call this the crucible of cognition. And that is, there's so much activity going on in our head, so much thinking that's happening. It's really exciting. It's really fun. I mean, you know, once you get into this profession, it if you can survive it and you like it. You're hooked for life, because it's so compelling. There's so much there to it, that it creates this swirl of mental activity. intellectual, although I'm gonna mention also emotional, it, it really creates a really interesting opportunity for those of us in the profession. We'll talk more about that. So here's the key point, well, we have to master these skills. And you know you, we all try to get better at all these different skills that are important for tech transfer. But my experience, what made me successful. And when I talk to colleagues who are successful, I realized what separates people who are good enough from those who are really good. Those who make things happen. They, they they touch things, and wonderful things happen. What is that element? Well, I call it mindset. Now, I thought of this some time ago, like I said, probably two years ago, when I really started to put my mind to this. And I realized I started to focus on the word mindset. Subsequently, in doing my research, I found that I'm not the only one typical, right? Other people have been thinking about mindset. And there's actually a book out there that I will refer you to, which is titled mindset. So I'm not the only one. And, of course, a lot of the subjects that I'm going to be talking about, others have covered in one way or another, and I'm going to give you some of those resources that I've used. So what is mindset? Well, first of all, I think it's at its core, it's how you think. But more importantly, it's how you think about how you think. And for some of us, I mean, I know when it first happened to me, it was a real eye opener, that you could stop, separate yourself from your thoughts. And think about how you think about things. This was an eye opener for me, I'd never done that I've always I had always just, you know, I dive into the intellectual endeavor, and the rest just sort of naturally happened. So I realized that this idea of objectifying your thinking, and then being able to understand how that thinking process and the way and you're at it, or we're gonna get to the the way you think about it becomes really essential in the profession of Educational Psychology, and that discipline, they call it, the closest thing I can come up with is metacognition, they're thinking about how you think. And you can see, there's a lot of educators who are spending a lot of time theorizing and putting in practice these concepts of thinking about thinking and about learning, and try to apply it to education. The way they describe it metacognition is awareness and understanding of one's own thought process is so inherent in all this as the idea that you need to objectify your thinking, and you need to separate yourself. If and for some of you, you'll understand what I mean, others, you know, that's a little bit of a harder concept. We'll talk a little bit more about that. It's like attitude. Okay, mindset and attitude are similar. I think most of us are used to using the word attitude, we say, oh, yeah, he has a really good attitude. She has a bad attitude, you know, so this is something that we're used to using. And so it's it, I think, if you use mindset and attitude somewhat synonymously it kind of gets you there. So, I've got some illustrations of mindset, you know, just phrases and we've all heard these, we've all heard these, we've heard ourselves say these things, we've heard others say these things. And, and these phrases coming out of somebody's thinking process tells you something about what their mindset is. So, here's one, no matter how good things look, right now, something's gonna go wrong. Right? You know, you know, people, sometimes you may be one of these. I know people who, that's the way they think, versus no matter how things look, now, things will turn out for the best. Now I had a father, he was a physician, he happened to be an optimist. And on the second, he was always of the mind that it'll always things will always turn out for the best. That's my mindset because that's what I was kind of what I was taught to here's another one that's impossible versus where there's a will there's a way okay. So, attitude mindset, different way you you come at a problem a situation.

Speaker 2  19:49  
Some others, people are inherently selfish versus most people will do the right thing. You know, this kind of verges on the, you know, how do you look at what is your attitude about to your fellows and the people you work with, certainly tech transfer, there's no profession that I know of which is more rich with personalities, usually really smart people, like high intellectual achievers, a lot of personality. Why keep beating a dead horse versus if at first you don't succeed? Try try again. So, I'm suggesting to you that as you visually see these, you may pick yourself out and say, you know, I tend to be a pessimist or an optimist, a good life is full of interesting challenges versus life is difficult when you die. Right? It's and we all know people who are one or the other. And we probably find ourselves being one more or less one type or another. We'll talk about that. So why is this so important? Well, and this is my experience of having interviewed and hired and managed dozens of tech transfer professional. And of course, the administrative staff, I at one point, there were 35 people reporting to me about 10, tech transfer managers. So I've worked with a lot of people as a direct report and as their supervisor. And I've also worked with a lot of people in a in a collaborative, collegial relationship, skill, knowledge and expertise are necessary, but they're not sufficient for real success. And that's really the message of today is, obviously you got to get good at the skills, but you can get, and this is from learning, teaching all these people over the years realizing that if they don't have the right mindset, then it doesn't matter how good they are, at a lot of the skills, they're just not going to be as successful as they could be. So one of the things that I want to mention here is this balance of aptitude and attitude. And that is that there needs to be some, you know, this, you got to find the right balance, each of us needs to find, you know, you can't run completely on being an optimist, you need to have, you got to have some capability. So, but you got to find that, right, that right balance. Now, I know that the people that are attending this webinar have reached a level of achievement. Because you have a mindset, you have a mindset that's allowed you to be successful, that that's given you success, and you're going to continue to use it. And the only, the only problem I have with this webinar is that I don't get enough feedback from you know, when I do this with my students, one of the things I do is I open it up for discussion at some point. And I learned a lot from them about things they know about learning and doing and about solving problems and about working with people, the way they think about it. And I've picked up a lot. And I would pick up a lot if I could hear what you had to say about this. But I have also found and I'll speak for myself, I think we all can get stuck with a mindset that hinders rather than foster foster success, and it's pretty easy to do. Not easy to stay in a in a productive mindset all the time. That's a challenge for a whole bunch of reasons. I mean, life is filled with all these things that make it difficult for us to keep our our mindset as optimal as possible. I believe that mindset is the critical secret sauce for TTL. Professional icing. This is what now I'm teaching more and more this because I'm realizing that when I teach this, and I send people out and they come back and they go, you know, it's just changed for me, while I'm doing the same old things, but I'm doing him in a way that's productive. It's like the friction has lowered. And so I really think that and obviously that's why I'm teaching it today. So I want to mention these three types of people. I got a call from a guy, a TPO, Director at a university and he said, Hey, Dick, this young fellow has put you down as a reference. And he gave me his name. He said, You know, I'm I said, Yes, I do. He worked in my office briefly. He was mostly an intern and then we paid him for about six months. So yes, I I know who he is. He's a good guy. And so this fellow said to me, said, in my experience, there are two kinds of people. There's K can do and can't do, which is he? And I said, Oh, well, he can do it. He said, Good Good to know. He said, in my experience, there's two kinds of can do people. And I said, Oh, yeah, what are those? He says, there's the can do. Or the will do. So there's the can do can do is we are all can do people.

Speaker 2  25:29  
But here's a big mindset difference. There's the candidates or the will do. And, you know, knowing from my experience of watching my own staff, and watching my own professionals, as good as some of them are, some of them are not well do. Some of them are candies, but they don't do it. And I don't know why. And I think maybe we could chalk it up to we all have our own way of deciding when to take action. I tend to probably take action. Maybe sooner, though, I've got people who tell me that I don't take action soon enough, you know, there's no right answer here. I believe that there's a mindset for success and for happiness. Now, I'm not going to talk about that too much. But I will say that from my own perspective, that once you learn how to step back from your thoughts, how to how to objectify and analyze your thinking and to improve them so that they're serving you well, in your profession. It also slopped over into your personal life, things work out a whole lot better. And I'll just speak from from my own experience. So I mentioned this mindset book. Carol Dweck, psychologist, she has written a book on it called mindset, the new psychology of success. And I recommend it. I like the first couple of chapters after that I found it kind of was just saying the same thing over and over in a lot of anecdotes. But the I liked the first couple chapters because it presents What I think is a really good framework of thinking about mindset. And that is the growth versus fixed, as she calls it, the growth mindset versus the fixed mindset. So the growth mindset is this. It's success through personal evolution of doing learning and progressing. Okay, fixed mindset. It's success by proving you're smart. So she developed this by studying a lot of successful people or not successful people trying to understand what were the common themes. And what she found was that people who are generally more successful and happier in life have this growth mindset. They are doing learning progressing versus the fixed mindset in which you, you, you don't do things, and you make mistakes, and you want to avoid mistakes. And so therefore, you get your mindset is fixed, your mind is fixed, okay? And you end up with these imposed constraint constraints on your thinking, your ability, so to look a little deeper at growth versus fixed mindset, fixed, if you're smart, intellectual effort, and difficulty is a bad thing is to be avoided. So if it's difficult, if it's hard, if it's challenging, that's a clue you should stop it. You know, that's something that you don't belong in this, I mean, I'll raise my hand and say, I wish I'd known this with music when I was younger. Nobody told me that music, learning music was going to be hard. So I dropped it. And now, at my age, I wish that I had been encouraged to pursue it, even though it was hard. I figured it wasn't for me, I'm not good enough. So growth says intellectual effort and difficulty is what makes you smart, and leads to learning and achievement. And, and keep in mind, I think that the TT o profession, the tech transfer profession is absolutely perfect. For the growth mindset. Those who have the growth mindset can really prosper. I think now, one of the things and Dweck will mention this in her book is that we are all not pure growth or pure fixed, we are somewhat of a mix. And there are some subjects, like I just said, I'm a growth mindset in most ways, but I used to be more of a fixed mindset. Certainly when it came to certain endeavors, music and creative endeavors, art, that sort of thing. I I didn't think I was good enough. So I didn't pursue it. With Science and Technology, I decided that I could have a growth mindset. So you will find your own self in there somewhere. So the fixed says and I think this is the best way to think about the fixed versus the growth mindset. Fixed Mindset says, I can't do that. The growth says, I wonder how I'll do Is that? So? When I saw that phrasing, I immediately understood that I was a growth mindset. And that, you know, now I've been doing it long enough and tech transfer always threw me throws you new technologies, you don't know anything about it, what are you going to do? Well, I can't do that. I didn't know anything about lasers. I don't know anything about whatever it is, whatever walks in your door, now I had the pleasure of working on a great variety of technologies. When I first started at Cornell, my portfolio included all the material science, all the software, all of the things like lasers, all the electronics, all computer science, and plant variety. Now, it was such a crazy mix. But what it gave me was this, every day was something new. And I could either say I can't do it, or I would dive in, in terms of learning the technology. And of course, learning all the different personalities and the different ways different disciplines things. So the growth mindset further, it's this fundamental belief that you're in control of your own ability and destiny. And that success ultimately comes from your doing your learning, and improving. It's a dynamic moving forward process, where hard work and effort and persistence are essential, but it's really more critical, this underlying belief that you're in control of your fate, that you'll make mistakes, that's key, you will make mistakes, as you learn, evolve and succeed in the face of difficulty and challenge. And one of the things I've noticed in, I teach in other countries, and therefore other cultures, this fear of making mistakes, this fear of losing face this fear of not being smart enough of appearing, you're not the expert, when you talk to the inventor, this can really be paralyzing. And so this is where I have to really try to cultivate this growth mindset. So that people feel comfortable in that realm. So with a growth mindset, making mistakes is not just okay. It is not just something that you live with. It's something that you actually it's almost it's a badge, it's a sign of learning while trying. I know people who have taken the growth mindset, and made it to be a central part of their professional modus operandi. And they they do well, they learn very fast. And yeah, they make mistakes along the way, but boy, they're just always evolving, and pushing forward. And boy, did they get good, you know, and that's how I survived. So fear of mistakes hinders your progress. Perfectionism is the enemy of the possible some of you may have heard of that. I think that's absolutely true in this tech transfer arena, if you want to, if you want perfectionism, you're in the wrong business. This is not yet. So the growth mindset applies to your professional and your personal life and also to your relationships. I think once you begin to understand this growth mindset, it allows you to be more flowing more free it, it frees one up to have a more I think I'll speak for myself, but I think a more healthy outlook. The classic optimism versus pessimism, right? And you got to find that right balance. The growth mindset tends to be optimistic. The the fixed mindset is more pessimistic. And as we've all we all look around and go is that do we think of the glass is half full or half empty? Right. These are the phrasings that we've all been used to. And we think about ourselves, and we think about others and I have generally looked around the room and said the successful T tech managers that I know are glass half full people, right. But I believe that optimism and realism can coexist. And I think that being fantasy minded or just being an unrealistic dreamer, that's not where it's at. You all of us need and I think we pride ourselves on as a tech transfer professional. you pride yourself on being grounded in reality, the reality of good science, of good technology and of course, good creative endeavors when it's outside of the Sci Tech realm. But we believe in that we believe in facts and we believe in data and we believe in substantiation. And we never want to leave that good grounding, that said, we also want to be optimistic realists. We want to be optimistic and yet realistic. And I call myself a practical dreamer. And I think that's the attitude that's the mindset I like to bring to to what I do in this profession. So you're looking at So you're saying, Okay, I've got a mindset. And it's the product of all my years of education and interaction, and my work experience and my relationships, and my reading and learning, etc. Okay?

Speaker 2  35:14  
Here's the good news. We can change our mind, we can change your mindset. And I'm here to tell you that you absolutely can. I've witnessed it in myself over the past five years in particular, because I've made it a focal point of my, my efforts. There is the some of you know about this, this theory that is relatively well established now that there is neuroplasticity, which is the ability of the brain to change continuously throughout an individual's life. I'm going to refer to the book aware, Dr. Dan Siegel is the director of the Mindsight Institute at UCLA and he talks about neuroplasticity at some length. And in the book aware which I'll show you the towards the end. Here's the way he phrases it where attention goes neuron firing flows, and where neuron firing flows, pathways are built. And more pathways are built, they produce behaviors, and where behaviors exist, they produce states. So he goes into a lot, a lot of detail about that. But basically, the idea is that you can if you put your attention on a way of thinking, like optimism, right? If you if you want to think in a positive way, you will create neuron firing in that pattern. And where that flow flow of neurons happens, the pathways are created, and ultimately behaviors and states are produced, you just have to practice it. And you have to just say, well, it is possible that I can change the way I think and my mindset. First of all, how do you change it? mindset, you do it by first of all step back and you think about your thinking, view your Hello, your view your thinking objectively, okay? I put it this way, practice putting as much space as possible between yourself and your thoughts. Now for some of you, you may think I have no idea what he's talking about. For others of you, some of you, and I'm going to mention meditation and meditation as a classic way for you to shut down your thoughts or distance yourself from thoughts. And so they're not just grabbing hold of you, and you're not completely controlled by your thinking. So then we can talk more about this and maybe for another lecture, practice putting as much space as possible between yourself and your thought objectify your thinking. The in Siegel's book, where he talks about the wheel of awareness, and he's got one mechanism, and there are many, I have a few and I'll refer to a few in which they are tools to learn how to step back and observe your thinking. Think about your thinking, analyze your thinking, and, and determine where it can be improved and where it can be fixed. Okay. Some people like to consider their thinking as a voice, they hear the voice, that's fine. That's one mechanism that people use. I suggest you contemplate how emotion relates to your thought processes. When you step back, and you look at your thought process, you'll realize, if you're like me, you'll realize that emotions and intellectual activity are oftentimes intertwined. And I'm here to tell you that I recommend that you separate those out. Emotions is a great thing. And it's got a lot of power. And I think it's extremely useful. I mean, joy and happiness, and all those things are wonderful. And I get very passionate and excited about doing tech transfer because I feel like I'm doing something good for humanity. But negative emotions, you know, anger, resentment, frustration, those things can really get in the way of your intellectual work that you want to do. So practice objectifying your thought process. Practice separating the intellectual from the emotional in your thought process, initially, you just have to think about that. You just have to step back and go Wait, every time I think about the subject, I get angry, right? Well just realize you don't really have to be angry. You can sit back and just think about the intellectual aspect of that and consciously say, I'm just not going to be angry about it. Notice again, this requires that you that you mentally have a way to separate yourself from your intellectual activity. Meditation is the classic and the ones I've been doing meditation off and on for years, and the one thing I will say about meditation, there's as many different ways to meditate as there are people find your own way, find a way to be quiet in your mind, find a way to distance yourself from your thought, find a way to turn off the thoughts, okay? Find your own way. I do, I do a lot of it when I run, I run every day. Okay? Remember to step back from being caught up in intellectual content, the biggest challenge for the tech transfer manager is this because because of this crucible of cognition, we are so caught up in the the invention, in the aspects of the invention in the IP, and in the, in the commercialization and the negotiation, and the dealing with the faculty and all these things. We have to remember to step back from being caught up in all the intellectual content. How do you change what you realize that you can change, and I'm here to tell you that you can, and I'll refer to some books that will point you in the direction you can, and all you got to do is I'm going to and start to practice it. Choose the growth mindset. Talk back if you have a fixed mindset, and if you have a voice, if you use the voice talk back to it and say, No, I can do this, you know, I you know, tell yourself, a lot of people like the affirmation approach, it's fine. Try to stay in that growth mindset. Not always easy. But I I suggest to you that if you're in that growth mindset, more often than not, you will be more successful. avoid unnecessary mixing of intellect and non constructive emotion. Here's the key thing, I look forward to intellectual challenges and relish the difficulty. This is one of the things that I learned later on in life. I thought that I did not like the difficulty. I did it because I had to. And it caused a lot of stress, a lot of strain. And I'm not sure I handled the stress all that well. And we'll talk about that a little tiny bit later. I wish I had appreciated the difficulty. The difficulty is like in the frustration you feel the emotion you feel it's like muscle discomfort of a physical workout. So when we're lifting weights, for example, we don't, we don't complain that our muscles burn a little bit we know that has to happen. The same thing with this growth mindset in which you're intellectually challenged. And it's complicated is difficult you like that. It's, it's just something that's part of your growth process. Therefore embrace problems and challenges and enjoy the feeling of learning. feeling like you don't know anything and everything that you view acquire is now learning is like it's the vitality of life. And it's going to it's what the tech manager thrives on. Appreciate not knowing when you're the person that walks in, you don't know anything about a technology, you can bring a fresh perspective and for you, it's the challenge that allows you to allow your growth mindset and your your evolution to be supercharged. Don't worry, okay. Worry is like praying for something bad to happen. So one thing I would say is do not worry. Easy for me to say right? Yes. Well, I can recommend that you try hard not to spend time worrying about things. Welcome mistakes is a badge of learning. Enjoy being an amateur we'll we could talk more about this amateur, maybe some of you know comes from the root word lover. It means you do what you do because you love it. Love the process of learning of the new thing of tackling it. And you don't have to be the expert in absolutely everything. And it's a really refreshing and freeing mindset stimulating. Appreciate your curiosity, if there was one recommendation for all tech managers, it would be Stay curious. It and if you're not curious, we should talk about how to get curious ask questions. Wonder. It's one of the best things that ever happened to me is to be curious. Therefore, being a tech manager has been a delightful process behind Okay, that's I when you read the AWARE book, you'll see he makes a big deal. That's also a book I want to recommend and it's not on my list, but I will mention it. James Doty into the magic shop. Great book about mind.

Speaker 2  44:38  
And and conquering your mind and learning to use your mind as a powerful tool. He'll talk about kindness and humility and things like that. I'm not going to spend any time talking about that. Don't underestimate the power of concentration. One thing I've found is a lot of people have, they don't. They don't use it and spread clay in this modern world, man, we are so overwhelmed with information we do not concentrate. Here's a great book, Ernest wood. He's a Brit, he's long since dead. It's an old book. But you can get it still in print small. It's, it's called concentration and approach to meditation. And it's exercises on concentration. And it's just like working out at the gym, you just spend some time or concentrating concentrate your your mind, it's like a laser beam, best thing you could be doing. My recommendation is you use intoxicants and might alternans carefully judiciously or not at all, well, I'm a not at all person, which I wasn't for years. For years, I loved all that stuff. And I realized now looking back on it

Speaker 2  45:49  
my my mental faculties and my ability to use my mind as a really powerful tool for whatever I choose. Develop and use your sense of humor, I that's another thing that I recommend all tech managers in this profession, get a sense of humor, if you don't have it. Find it if you've lost it, use it if you've got it. And and there are ways I've actually taught some lectures on how to develop your sense of humor. You know, listen to funny. Podcasts, watch, stand up, read funny things. And just, and don't worry about you know, say some jokes and whatever it takes for you to develop your sense of humor. Enjoy the present moment. That's mindfulness, you can read a lot about it, I've got some books I'll tell you about. I think it's a good idea to cultivate mindfulness. Look for and try to solve problems. Accept mistakes, take action, maintain focus, don't be distracted, the more you can learn to concentrate, be in the moment. Enjoy solving the problems, the better off you'll be stay positive, negative voice in there, that's the fixed mindset. You just got to counter it, help others. This is part of the Be kind, but you know, help others and encourage collaboration. I think this is a key to success, certainly in this profession. stay resilient, be persistent. Always be learning. Believe in yourself and that setbacks are necessary. They're not just okay, they're necessary. You got to have setbacks. That's what the growth mindsets all about. take calculated risks. Stay in the growth mindset. So some specifics about being a tech transfer professional. First of all, I believe this is a noble profession, we're doing good for humanity. My dad was a doctor. And I wanted to follow in his footsteps. And I feel like I have every single day I'm doing, I'm doing the good work to bring technology forward. And I think all of us should be respectful and honored by what it is we are entrusted with and what we can do, okay, you hold the keys to successfully bringing new technology to success to society. If you do your job, well, society gets it. If you don't do your job, well, it may never see the light of day. You have a sacred I call it sacred, not really religious, but it's the word I like to use. It's so important to sacred duty to help bring solutions to problems for the public good. Right? I mean, these are, this is an attitude. This is a mindset that I I brought every day to my job at Cornell. And it's what powered me through all the BS, all the political stuff, all the difficult personalities, the day to day difficulties of doing this job. This was one of the things that kept me buoyant, moving forward and energized. I think the essential role of the tech transfer manager is little known, those of us in the profession, we know it and I think gradually what I'm seeing is that people are it's growing in appreciation. When I started, people thought the tech managers anybody could do it. They didn't pay you that much. Boy, were they wrong, right. I mean, number one, can anyone do it? No, that requires certain kinds of people. I've seen a lot of people try this profession, and they get out of it. Because number one, it's a hard way to make a living. And it's it's just too challenging. It's too hard for some people and it is too hard. But some of us get hooked anyway. I believe this, that in some cases, I think particular technologies. For example, the creativity required by the tech transfer manager, rivals that of the inventor. That's my belief, and I can show you that Numerous examples where that's true. Now sometimes it's pretty easy. And the inventor tells you, okay, here's my, here's what we're going to do. And here's the licensee, and then it's much more of a mechanical thing. And your your creativity is brought in, in the negotiation, and the deal making and so on. But my experience, I handled a portfolio where I did a lot of creative business development, I found the home for the technology. And we're going to talk a little bit more about that. So creativity of the tech manager sometimes can rival if, dare I say, exceed the creativity of the inventor. So mindset for success of the tech transfer professional accept the fact that most new technology will not advance despite all your efforts. So we all know that right? About 25% of selected technologies will succeed. One of the things you you all listening might appreciate, is that when I go to other countries where they're in a very early stage of development of the profession, when I asked them, How many inventions Did you receive last year, and they tell me we received 50? Okay, you got 50 invention disclosures, how many patent applications Did you file on on on those 100%, then you immediately know that they're in trouble. Because in my experience at Cornell, 50%, don't cut it, they're just not viable. And it's a waste of everyone's time to think that something will happen, they just won't know we're still willing to take risks on risky technology. But there's some that are just simply just not viable. And you'll never convince anybody that they're worth investing time and energy. This is one of the key things that we all need to keep in mind. Remember, that batting 300 In baseball, if you bet thought 300, year in and year out in baseball, you those of you who are baseball fans, or at least know baseball, you know, you'll be Hall of Fame. Okay? What that means is 70% of the time, a batter, who's a Hall of Famer strikes up. And so that's one of the things we live with, we live with that imperfection. We live with the fact that most of the time, the majority of the time, we're not going to have a quote success, unquote. And some people have asked me how in the world do you stay optimistic? How do you keep the growth mindset? How do you stay positive when you know that so many of your technologies will not be successful. And I've used the analogy, the baseball analogy, well, you know, the baseball players that only are going to hit 250. They don't quit because first of all, they're paid a salary as we are most of us. And we enjoy the process. We like the game. And and so I think that's something to remember. We love the game and and the process in and of itself is is enlivening it's, there's enough there for success. Even though we're only going to be batting 250 to 300. At best, we all say this, you'll kiss a lot of frogs. And that's something we should just get used to. I kiss a lot of frogs and they stay frogs. Once in a while they for me they turned into a princess or for some it might be a prince. The one thing I would say to I usually get a laugh out of this you might appreciate this is that what I didn't realize is that some of my technology princesses turn, princesses turned back in to Frog later.

Speaker 2  53:59  
But I think that once you've evaluated and selected a technology you should believe in its future. So once you've gone through the triage and selection, believe in it, you're the you're the champion, you're the one that can keep it alive. Sometimes. You know at Cornell I kept technologies alive for a long time. Believing in them, giving them energy, strategizing, letting them sit for a while and getting back on and making things happen. Be patient, creative, proactive and opportunistic. be inventive. Think outside the box in your commercialization, strategy and tactics. This is one of the things that I find lacking in a lot of newcomers to the profession. They're not as inventive and creative in their commercialization, their business development as is required. So I this is where I encourage a lot of folks to To really be inventive and be creative and apply lateral inventiveness, some of you know what I mean. I call it the specialty of the tech transfer office of the tech transfer manager lateral inventiveness. That is, it's where you bring novel and unintended applications of an invention. So the inventor brings you an invention. And you look at it and the inventor, never even thought about a different application you do and you take it. And it turns out to be the that's where it has its highest value and use. I have many occasions I've been doing that. Lately, I've been doing a lot of that because I, because now more and more, my because of my mindset, my growth mindset. And I'm bringing more and more to bear with clients. More and more, I'm bringing the creativity to the whole process, that I think a lot of us sit back and go, well, the creative part was done by the inventor. And in my experience, I think you're selling yourself short as a creative part of the process. So here's some examples of some lateral inventiveness from my, from my portfolio. The invention was an anti microbial nanoemulsion packaging film. And I, you know, I brought the aspect of a 3d cosmetic or medical devices before it was just a film. And I said, Well, why doesn't why can't we just make it three dimensional, and it turned out we could and so the patent now is, is a three dimensional covers three dimensional uses as well. And here's one that I had at Cornell. So I've been processed waste for wall construction material. This isn't so amazing. But the lateral invention was green skateboards. And we created that the tech tech transfer manager. Here's one that I have at Cornell, two photon laser scanning microscopy, that's out there in the field, I licensed that to Zeiss. And that they use it as a as a microscope. And I was the one that came in and said, Well, could we could we put that microscope into an endoscope. And so that's where the technology took a turn. Because of my activity. By the way, I had a funny occasion, one of my tech managers came and said, Oh, hey, boss, I went out and had a meeting with the inventors. And I'm now a co inventor. What do I do? And I don't know if that's ever happened to you, or you've seen about that experience. And one of the things I've always said is I've never asked to be a co inventor, even when I am in fact, I just I think that's opened up a can of worms, my, my suggestion to all of you is, you know, contribute and be a participant, but not a co inventor any more than the patent attorney should become a co inventor. I think you should experiment with different approaches and methods. Always be looking for commercialization opportunities, be looking for potential licensees, allies, I'm going to mention what I mean about commercialization allies. And one of the things I find is that, again, people, the tech managers aren't artists creative, thinking outside the box, as I would expect. And I've, I had to say this to myself, at some point, I went, Well, you know, we are in the innovation business, shouldn't we be innovators as well. So I tried to I told that to myself, I told it to my staff, I try to say it to myself all the time, try to remember that we're in the innovation business. And that means we should think about innovating in all the things we do, at least be open to it. That's part of that growth mindset. And I think it keeps you open from getting in a void you getting stuck in a way of thinking a way of being. And I think your mind remains more fluid and flexible. I wanted to mention this, this is something that I now teach the idea of commercialization allies. And as I tell you about this, I'm sure some of you will say yes, I know, Dick. I've done it. This is not news to me. Others of you may say, Wow, I've never heard of this thing. Most of you will probably be in the middle and say yeah, I guess I've done a little bit of that. I've never used that term. But now that you mentioned it, yes, I can see it's been useful in the past and I should do more of it. So what the commercialization ally is, this is typically an entity that is not a licensee He does not want to be a licensee. However, they are motivated to see success. Now, at some point, I probably should do a a webinar on commercialization allies because it's a really rich topic. I'll give you an example. There. As I say, Here, commercialization allies are typically not licensees. And I'll give you one example. I had a client, a university client, where the technology was a a packaging film that have antimicrobial and antioxidant properties. And the idea was, and it was somewhat elastic. And so this idea was to wrap the fresh produce in the packaging, and it would extend the shelf life. Turned out it, it does work, which is always nice when a technology does. I said that the logical licensees would be those who are in the business of manufacturing, packaging films and packaging related packaging apparatus. And certainly, that's where the action is in terms of funding a real commercialization pathway. However, in the early stages, what I encouraged was that we found that we find some entity that was motivated to see the technology succeed, because they want to buy the packaging film. So we found a company that was in the business of fresh fruit and vegetable packaging and distribution. And they became a key ally and provided a lot of resources, access to produce for one thing, but also tests. The materials and they put, they didn't put in any money, but they put in a lot of in kind a lot of time, and effort. And they were validators so that once they said, this works, we want it, you could then then take that to the potential licensees and say here is a testimonial from a potential user. So the commercialization Li is really a powerful tool that I recommend everybody give thought to when you're thinking about how to commercialize your technology. Balanced thinking with acting. And remember the three types of people the can't do, can do and the will do. And that successful tech transfer professionals are will do. Okay, and the more of a will do. Like every day, when you come to the office, you sit down, you will do right. And Perfection is the enemy of the possible and inaction the opponent of success. Right. So let's not worry about perfection. That's the fixed mindset growth mindset. It says, hey, you know, it doesn't have to be perfect. Let's just get going. Let's try some things. And let's move on. Be a catalyst be a catalyst, not a reactant. And what I mean by that is, as a tech manager, one of the things that became very powerful mind set, for me was this idea of being a catalyst in the whole process. You're not an inventor, you're not the creator. You know, aside from the fact that yes, you might do a lateral invention. But what you are is a facilitator, you can lower the Gibbs free energy for those of you who are chemists, you can make it happen. And the beauty of a catalyst. Those of you again, are chemists know that you don't need very much catalyst to make a reaction go. So that's what a tech manager is. There's not much of you to go around. So you've got to think about how you can touch a process in a catalytic way to make it maximally effective in the process. Okay. Now, here's one thing I want to mention. I'm on my soapbox about this. But this is something that occurred to me years ago. This mindset gave me the tool for success. And I teach it now wherever I go, and it's probably one of the most I think, I think, surprising, surprising. attitudes.

Unknown Speaker  1:04:27  
I say

Speaker 2  1:04:27  
never forget your primary client. Now I frequently in my courses, I say, Alright, who's your primary client as a tech manager? And I get a lot of answers. The best answer is the inventor. That's a really good answer. Hard to hard to argue with that. Yes, that's true. Or no, it's my institution thereafter, after all, they're paying my salary. And I have to work I have to direct the reputation the institution is paramount. What about your boss? You know, what about you? Your your startups in the public and so on. There's a lot of different answers that you could rank and we could all talk about them and argue, I think probably inventor is probably your, your key client. However, all that said, I believe we all have a primary client. And if we keep that client, first, foremost in our mind, and always do well, for the client, everything will fall into place. Yeah, the technology, I look at my technologies as my clients. So I think of them as it's my responsibility to see that technology shepherded to success, whatever that may mean, now, in our role in a nonprofit tech transfer office, or the best we can do, although some of you may be in a for profit, the best we can do is to license it and then step back and watch it happen. And there we then become a voyeur. And we can stay involved to some degree, but it's essentially up to our licensees. But you've done the best you can up to that point. All right. And so I'm a big believer that if you keep the technology as your primary client, everything else works. Ask yourself, What can I do today to move the technology forward, develop a vision for the technology, this is one of the things that I realized I hadn't taught anybody how I did this. So I'm going to give you a few, we're going to do a little tiny detour on developing a vision for the technology. Okay. What is that some of you will immediately get it, some of you may not. Some of this has to do with your right brain left brain kind of thinking. That's another aspect that we're not going to talk about much today. But one of the things I've had my mind open to is the idea that we all tend to be either left brain and right brain thinkers. And that if we are heavy left brain thinkers, which a lot of it tend to be because of our background in science and engineering and technology. If we can cultivate the other side of our brain, the right side, the more creative so called creative, artistic, whatever you want to what word you want to use, we then bring a more holistic and a more creative and more, more effective, I think, in some ways, particularly when it comes to having a vision for technology commercialization. Now, sometimes this technology vision is really critical. And other times not so much. If you have an if you have an invention, where it's very obvious where this thing goes, where it fits, what its market relevance is, if you're you don't need this. But in my experience, my portfolio always included lots of technologies where I wasn't sure where it had its best, highest value in use. So what is a vision protect commercialization, its ability to think about and plan for potential uses of new technology with imagination, and wisdom. Okay, so you combine these it's imagination, so you really got to be cultivating your imagination. And I find that some people, especially left brainers aren't as good at that than right brainers. But by wisdom, I mean, more grounded in grounded in the science grounded in the engineering grounded in what we know about marketplaces, you know, that said, Hey, I've been doing this long enough to realize I've been, I've been wrong before. And I'll be wrong again. So you always have that little thing in the back of your head going, well, I may be wrong this time, too. So I always want to keep myself a little bit, a little bit flexible. So there are ways to discover your vision. Sup for some of you, you'll get this others, you'll be like, What is he talking about? But these are the different attributes and pathways to developing a vision. We could talk about each and every one of them. And, and at some of the points, maybe we should talk about that. But just to leave it with you that you can develop a vision for a technology. You can intelligently and creatively imagine the technology in practice solving a problem creating opportunities. You've got to use optimistic glass half full thinking. That you know that said again, I'm not talking about fantasy minded kind of thinking but at least being optimistic enough being willing to you know Think outside the box a little bit. And being willing to make a mistake that maybe something, you should try something and maybe it won't work. Combine your left brain with your right brain. And here's a book that I recommend A Whole New Mind by Daniel Pink, I'm gonna give you a list of all these resources here at the very end. I call it practical dreaming, and encourage your whole mind to there are pink has a bunch of exercises that I think are provocative in terms of getting you to think in a more of a holistic way. Find dots and connect some and enjoy the creative process that a tech manager has at his or her. As part of your professional activities I want to things I find is the tech managers. I think they just sell them show itself short and they don't bring as much creativity. They bring a lot of analytical skills as they must, and understanding and intellectual power and understanding the technology and the IP and so on. But what's really critical than is to bring some creativity and enjoy that. The more I've gotten into it, the more I realized what a what a kick it is how fun it is to be creative and be responsible for seeing a technology creatively applied in you had a big role in it. So stimulating your vision, listen and think symphonic play, don't worry so much about connecting unrelated ideas and disciplines. And I could you know, for another day, I can tell you how I do that. But I'll leave it to you now to be thinking about how you could do this. Don't fear crossing of intellectual and disciplinary boundaries. And that's pretty easy for those of us who have a growth mindset. And we're tech managers, be looking for relationships, have fun with that look for even desperate relationships, I do that all the time, where I'm making connections, that other people, I get a kick out of making some connections between technologies and market applications. And so enjoy that and do not fear mistakes. And don't be a perfectionist, be a lateral inventor, use metaphor. And there's a book out there called surfaces and essences all it teaches you all about the power of using metaphor and analogy and what a portal it is to, to some of the most beautiful kinds of thinking that our brains are are capable of. See the big picture, because it newsstands are these days, you know, get online and use it to stimulate your thinking, draw, follow the internet links, you know, use it for that purpose. Enjoy looking for problems to your solutions. That's part of your inventions as part of the lateral inventiveness inspiration board for some I don't do that. But they're this stream of consciousness using word maps. Any of you by the way, any of you who would like to talk further about any of these things, there's a lot of side branches to this lecture that we could go down. And I'm happy to talk to you about some you know, specifics and how I've done it and what results and how you might apply it yourself. This word map thing is has been extremely useful. For me, it's a fun exercise, I'll just tell you very quickly, you sit down with a big piece of paper, and you make these these little thought balloons and you just come up with words and the words just keep coming. And you just build these amazing. I call them word maps. And it's really fun. And if you saw me do it, you'd go wow, that's pretty interesting. It gets you flowing, it kind of taps into a stream of consciousness that some of us are really surprised that we're capable of. So there's, here's some brainstorming ideas, I'm not going to go into that that's a whole that's an area that

Speaker 2  1:14:16  
I don't think we do enough of not easy because we got We're busy. But there these are some suggestions on brainstorming to stimulate your vision. I'm also a big believer in, in dialogue and and I get a kick out of getting together with different people different perspectives and mindsets. Again, that's kind of hard to do. But I I've found ways to cultivate that. And it can be really exciting. It's like kind of a higher level of being a human being and you get a lot of different people brainstorming and solving and pretty pretty interesting. And always remember that finding good ideas requires many ideas that lineup Halling Nobel Prize winner many years ago, said, and I'm a believer in this, and that is that if you're going to have good ideas, you got to have a lot of ideas. And that means a lot of your ideas are not going to be good ideas, okay? And that's alright. Because if you're in the growth mindset, that's just the fodder for moving forward, it's okay. And celebrate others ideas your own and the synergy of communal thought. Some final advice, okay. And then I'm gonna wrap this up based on my own experience, and watching dozens and dozens and dozens of colleagues early in the profession, mid career, and and later on, and now I tend to work with a lot of folks have been doing it now they've moved on to more of an advisory senior statesman kind of role. Be curious. And if you're not curious, you should figure out how to get curious, I think it's, if I can tell you to do one thing, that's it, and enjoy this unique profession. And if you're not enjoying it, you should probably step back and think about why you're not enjoying it. It's a really tremendous, fun profession. I know, it can drag you down with a lot of the sometimes the personality, friction, we deal with a lot of difficult people. There's the emotions, as I say, you know, read out your intellect from the emotions and put that in its proper place. But it's really take it for me, I turned 66 This year, and I've been doing this now, well, in one way or another since I was roughly 26. And I couldn't recommend it more highly for certain people. Have fun. If you're not having fun. I really believe that if you're not having fun, you're probably doing something wrong. That doesn't mean every single thing is enjoyable. But generally speaking, it should be fun. And if you get into the growth mindset, and you start to tap into some of these aspects of your thinking, I'm a big believer in practice concentration and do some meditation, then dive into the intellect and be creative. You're going to find a lot of joy, and a lot of fun that's going to come out of this and the sense of humor. Enjoy being an amateur. The sense of humor is critical. I use mine as much as I can. And in fact, I like to think of my my workshops, not this one so much. But when I stand up in front of people, and I'm doing it in person, it's my the best I can do in terms of having a second career as a stand up comedian. And I really enjoy it. And somebody once said, people learn best when they're laughing. And I tend to believe that so please, increase your sense of humor you that you're finally finally finally, my last comment is your personal and professional reputation is your most valuable asset. Never forget it. And with that, Oh, these are the books that I've referred to today. The let's see,

Unknown Speaker  1:18:32  
yeah,

Speaker 2  1:18:34  
the one I do not have on here. And I think Callie, this, so everybody will have access to this, I want to make sure they all have it. And they can refer to it. And also, you're welcome to contact me anybody would like to have further conversation about any aspect of this. Send me an email, my email is R S. C five@cornell.edu. And maybe that can be made available to people who want it, happy to talk about it. And there is one other book that I mentioned that is not on this list, and that's into the magic shop by James Dodie. Dodie is a neuro surgeon who is at Stanford is on the faculty at Stanford runs the altruistic Research Center, some crazy title like that, but the good read and it's really profound, the the effect, the powerful effect that you can have on your life, if you learn to have the right mindset and right, right attitude. So with that, I'll wrap this up and I think we have just a few minutes maybe for any questions.

Speaker 1  1:19:53  
Great, thank you so much for sharing that insight. If anybody has any questions, there is an ask a question. Shouldn't box towards the left side of your screen? We do have one. Do you have a recommendation on a book regarding the power of metaphor?

Speaker 2  1:20:12  
Yes, I do. That book is. And I, if if you'll send me an email, the art to RSC five@cornell.edu, I will send you the book, title and author, because I make I don't remember the author's right now, and I may get the title backwards. But I believe it's called surfaces and essences. And it's, it's just that it's all about metaphor. And I found it to be really enlightening. And it improved my way of thinking. And I these days, I do a lot of teaching, obviously. And I have found it to be a really powerful tool in, in in what they call a pedagogy. So in my pedagogy, my teaching, so please send me an email and I'll send you that. That title.

Speaker 1  1:21:14  
Great, thank you. That's all the questions we have for now. If somebody had a question that didn't get a chance to type it in, please feel free to reach out either to Dr. Carson directly or you're welcome to reach out to me. And I can connect you with him. Any Thanks,

Speaker 2  1:21:39  
Holly, I was just gonna say, can you make sure that anybody who wants to email me has my email address? Yes, absolutely. Okay, I am in the autumn directory, of course.

Speaker 1  1:22:00  
Okay. All right. Then, on behalf of autumn I want to thank Richard for this informative discussion. And thank all of you for attending. We hope you found this webinar informational. Please remember to complete the webinar evaluation. A link to this will be emailed to you this afternoon. This will help us to serve your needs in the future. Once again, we want to thank our annual webinar sponsor, Marshall, Gerstein and Borun. And we want to remind you that a recording of the webinar will be available for viewing within about two weeks of today's date. access this recording is written included in your registration fee. This is the autumn website to view the recording or purchase a past webinar you may have missed. This concludes our program for today. Thank you for joining us, and have a wonderful afternoon.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai