Speaker 1  0:08  
Don Hello and welcome to today's autumn webinar. Promote your tto more effectively. My name is Don vielle young, and I'm a member of Autumn's educate team and today's staff host, All lines have been muted to ensure high quality audio, and today's session is being recorded. If you have a question for the presenter, we encourage you to use the Q and A feature on your zoom toolbar. Should you need closed captioning during today's session, the Zoom live transcript feature is turned on and available on your toolbar. Before we begin, I would like to acknowledge and thank Autumn's online professional development sponsor, Marshall Gerstein. We appreciate your ongoing support, and now I would like to introduce today's speaker Otto. Paul is a startup communications strategist and founder of core communications. His background as a journalist, serial entrepreneur and Head of Communications for startups has made him a leading industry expert, and gives him unique experience to help University sourced innovators tell more effective stories to external audiences. He is a board member of the autumn Better World project and committed to helping universities innovate. We are excited to hear from you learn today. Otto,

Speaker 2  1:30  
thanks so much. Emve all. I really appreciate that, and it's great to be here and I just get started. I assume people are going to be kind of trickling in maybe over the next couple of minutes, but we can certainly sort of get started here, and people can, people can sort of trickle in as they do so. Again, obviously, I was already introduced. I just wanted to share a couple of thoughts about my background, which are, which is, which is important, or sort of maybe sets the stage for today, right? So one is that I started as a journalist, and I was really able to experience media and production and sort of gathering facts quickly and sorting them through that I later became an entrepreneur and had four different companies that I co founded, Head of Communications and for a couple of companies. And then what I've really enjoyed doing is working as a consultant and working with a lot of universities and with their innovation teams, and obviously, as a member of autumn and a member of the Better World project, I've been delighted to sort of work more deeply and broadly across the sort of university landscape. I find that the the the deep tech companies that are coming out of universities often find incredible success in terms of developing technologies, but really need help in terms of telling that story a little bit more effectively. And I think that's going to ladder up nicely to what we're going to be talking today about how to promote the tto is more broadly. Obviously, the startups are an important component of that, in that in the work that you guys do. So I've really enjoyed that, and I'm going to break my talk today into three pieces. I'm going to first talk a little bit about the framework of things. Talk a little bit about sort of the structure and the background of thoughts. Then I wanted to talk, I guess, about the two components that I'm going to discuss today. One is around the website and how to frame your story a little more effectively. Give you some ideas for your website, for the tto website, and then the second is about the stories. Obviously, the better world project submissions that I hope you're all going to be doing is a so some ideas on how to structure that. And again, not going to break use of huge ground for anyone who's gone to journalism school and the like. But I think it's always worth sort of refreshing how to think about things and how to present things. And hopefully some of the framework that I provide is going to give you a little bit more sort of sort of guidance and philosophical sort of framework for you to think about, how to talk about the stories that you that you're going to be talking about of the technologies that you've invented. So I work with startups, as I mentioned, to help them tell their story better. And then obviously, the blind spots that I see in academic startups are something that make them very, particularly powerful to help they have this amazing technology, not able necessarily to tell their story effectively to the outside world. And again, a lot of what I think there is going to be very applicable to the TTOs you guys obviously help institutions accelerate impact. So it's very similar in that sense, you are just essentially doing the exact same thing, one level up, you're trying to help the institution that you work at, whether it's university or research facility or whatever it might be more effectively. And so I think that there's a lot that you can do in many ways. Obviously, I realize that not all of the licensing you do is to startups. In fact, maybe it might it's a minority, but still, you are still sort. Of an incubator and an accelerator of these ideas, whether they then end up with startups or they end up licensed out to industry. You are a collection of these stories, and I think that the impact that the tto can have is to burnish those stories and to frame and present them in a way that's going to make the ultimately the success of your group higher, but then also raise the profile of the impact that you're having with your institution's leadership. One thing I was just researching the other day is the the growth of of research revenue and research expenditure. About three quarters of that comes from, from government, state and federal. But in 2013 it was 67 billion. And this is now amongst four year this is four year institutions. So some of the sort of non student ones might be excluded here, but about $100 billion and now in 2023 right? So that's up 45% so the question is, is your tto sort of 46% more visible and powerful than it was 10 years ago. And I've certainly seen some that have done obviously, a very good job, and a lot of obviously, you know, so do, but I think there's room for improvement, and I think there's room for you to raise your profile. And so those are going to be some of the things that we're going to talk about today. So I think of tto is really as the heart, in many ways, of what these institutions do. It's obviously the to the outside world they talk about, when their students talk about all the students and the lives that they're changing, and they talk about maybe sort of the research that they're doing. But at the end of the day, the tto is the place where action actually happens, and your institutions actually make an impact on the outside world. And you are looking for, on the one hand, you're directly working with two audiences. You're working with the faculty. You're trying to increase the visibility of your of your group amongst the faculty and the researchers at your institution, and you're trying to encourage them to participate, right? So sign the invention disclosures and all that, and sort of engage with your with your staff from an early stage, so you don't have these awkward moments where the faculties may be already having a chat with someone out in the industry before, before all the paperwork has been signed. And then on the other side, you're working with the licensees, be that startups or, again, obviously industry things, in order to, in order to license that stuff out, right, and make more deals at better terms. But there's two other important audiences that you are trying to reach. And maybe, on the one hand, for the media, right? You're trying to get better coverage for that, and again, that's a sort of the reflected glory of which is going to then reach the university or the institutional administration, right? Ultimately, you want to grow the respect on the staff and the resources that you have available to you so that you can do your job even better with the faculties and the licensees. So let's, let's talk about how we're going to, how we're going to approach the messaging to these different audiences today in in and so that we can, that we can increase our impact with each one of those four key audiences, and one of the guides that I use for in my own life, and I certainly encourage all of my startups to do it. And I think it's valuable for all of you as well. Honestly, for every email that you ever send, every presentation that you give, anything that you do really is we tend to be very message focused with, oh, well, I'm going to be invited to speak at the conference, or I'm going to go and give this presentation, you know, what should I say? Well, I encourage you always to think of the aim framework in the back of your mind. Always think of the audience first, like, who am I talking to? What do they need? What do they fear? What is the what are they coming in, thinking about, what are they expecting, and all that. The second step is, well, what do I want to do with those people? Right? What's my intent? Am I just trying to impress them with being professional? Am I trying to get this close a deal? Am I trying to sell them something? Am I trying to get them to join my company, whatever it might be? And only then, once you know who you're speaking with and what you want to get out of that messaging, that's when you move to the the message itself, right? So think of that aim framework in the back of your mind, pretty much whenever you do something, and again, it'll help you get away from the thinking message first,

Speaker 2  9:32  
another framework that I find is is very helpful that I've sort of developed as I've been working with these startups, is something I call the pull pyramid, and it's, if you guys know the Maslow's hierarchy of needs, you'll see a lot of sort of structural similarity, right? Maslow saying that, you know, until your basic functions are sort of food and shelter aren't taken care of, you can't worry about love and community, and before that, you can then sort of comes to self actualism. And realization and achievement and the like, right? There's this step of needs, and the exact same kind of thing holds for the messaging of companies. We tend to be very focused on the what, and it's enough. When I look on tto websites, generally speaking, I see an awful lot of process oriented things, right? Like, here's all the links that you're going to need. Here is the, you know, here's a description of this group of professionals. Here is maybe a little bit of process. Click here to research our million different technologies that we have, right? So it's, it's very mechanical, which is all true and accurate and wonderful, but it's a little bit boring. And what I love about the autumn and the Better World project is literally like pushing you straight to the top of this pyramid. Like, let's think really big. How are we making it as the name implies, like a better you're making it a better world. And so that's the sort of the top and certainly just the process of getting you out of the process that you're in and thinking about the the biggest level impact that you're going to have is very important. I would say that there are multiple levels, though, and there's that that these benefits, the what ladders up into relative levels of why. So let's go through kind of a quick example on that, so that you can kind of see how that is. And these are the kinds of things that, as you keep these different levels of why in mind, and you're going to apply them then in different places. And when appropriate, there's times when you want to talk about the top level and say, Hey, this is how we're making the world a whole, you know, a better place, which is a lot far away from, hey, we're a group of professionals. And, you know, click here to book a meeting, and you'll know that at various times, is the right time to sort of bring in the different levels of why. So, for example, how this might work for a tto. And so what I have is, one is the kind of the messaging that you might have to the outside world, and one is sort of the messaging, if you will, to yourself, the benefit to yourself as a as a someone who's leading or working in a tto, right? So the first is just, sort of quote the product features, right? It's the what it's, Hey, we're professional, we're helpful, and we're good, and we've, we're, you know, good at what we do, and we've got all bunch of dedicated staff here, and we've got a bunch of resources at your disposal, right? We're like, we're doing a good job. We're here to do things nicely, then sort of the next level, like, well, what does all that professionalism and resource availability mean? Well, it means that we're going to protect your IP, right? We're going to help the university sort of, sort of capture and legally process and successfully process the IP that's being created. On the other hand, we're going to then license it out, right? So that's what you're doing. Then, with all, again, all that professionalism to you is, you're, you're you're exceeding your expectations. You're doing great job. You're bringing innovations to market, right? Like, that's how the the what of your quote, product features of your tto are expressing themselves. Then the sort of benefit of, well, what is the benefit of all that, of you being all professional, and you getting this IP and you licensing out, well, it's going to you're accelerating innovation, and you're bringing more revenue to the university or the institution that you work at, right? So there's that's, that's the result of all this, the what and the first level of why, and that's going to bring to you, hopefully, more resources, more staff, more respect amongst inside of the institution. People like, wow, that tto is really bringing it. And then finally, we get to that sort of better world thing, right? So what does this mean? Because we've done all those things, and we've accelerated innovation, and we've been professionals and the like, well, that's going to lower healthcare costs or help people live longer lives. Is going to build the better world, right? And that's ultimately, in the in the grand benefit for you as a as someone running in a tto, right? It's going to raise the profile of the whole institution. Maybe it's going to attract better researchers and faculty and administrators to your institution, and everyone's going to win, and your your your role of the entire institution will be raised as a result. So these are the sort of different levels. And again, I find a lot of product feature level discussions, and I encourage you to always think about the why, and I'll sort of touch on this again. But one of the reasons why, the why is always so important is because people don't come in, you know, worried about, like, oh, is the invention disclosure, you know, easily accessible on the website. They they want to know, like, maybe the researcher. What they really want, right? Is they want to make an impact in the outside world, all of this, aspects of the details of how you do that, and the forms they need to fill out, and the meetings they need to have and all that is just a sort of the means to the end. But they don't wake up thinking, Man, I really hope that, you know, it'll be easy to find my invention disclosure form, right. They wake up thinking, Man, I really want to make the world a better place, and I want to have an impact, and I want my research to mean something. And so if you speak to them in the. Language that they understand, they will be far more willing to be receptive to the message that you give them. And obviously, at some point, then you'll drop back down to the product features of of the of the office that you, that you work in. And so, so if you again, if you think about the if we go back to the slide of the impact, right? So, so some example messaging that you might have for each of these, right? It's like, so to the faculty, it's like, we help you impact the world. We help your research make a difference. We help you achieve, essentially, you achieve the dreams that you've, that that you have, and we're here to make that possible, right? To the licensees, be that startups or or industry things, right? We're here to help you and be a partner in your win, win success, and we've done it for other people. And we're here to sort of make your dreams come true, which is, in this case, a more a business minded impact. And then on the on the on the media, these are the sort of, again, the two reflected ones, right? Like you we're going to make your life easy. We're going to hand you great stories. We're going to talk about all the wonderful things that we do and the wonderful things that are coming out of the university, and we're going to emphasize why they matter. We're going to give you sort of printable, ready copy, because we understand how to frame these stories in a way that addresses the larger pictures and the larger meanings of what's going on, right? And then, obviously, again, to the university administrators. We're going to help you, you know, Mr. And Mrs. Administrator, we're going to help you raise the profile of this institution. We're going to get more money in. We're going to increase our impact. We're going to do the things that the administrators are sort of wake up in the morning worried about. So if you address them on the dreams that they already have, and not the sort of mechanics of what you do, then you're positioning the what that you do in terms of the why they would already want it, and shifting from that what to Why is what you see in a lot of the really successful marketing out there. And there's no reason for a university, and I guess, and again, this is one of the things that I find with a lot of the the university based startups, is that there's just a there's a

Speaker 2  17:11  
fear that it's used car salesmanship, if you're sort of talking about some of these larger things, and you're not just talking about it into relatively sort of dry, mechanical, scientific terms. And there's very good reasons why academia is the way it is and it should be, and I don't want it to change, but at the same time, when you're then talking about some of these larger things, and you're now trying to turn that to the, quote, real world, and make an impact. And again, the tto is nothing if not that inner intersection and that meeting point, that membrane between the academic world and the outside world, then you are going to reach that outside world a lot more effectively, and you'll be able to reach those dreams and make those things that the that the administrators and the researchers have been doing and wanting a lot more possible. So if we look at something like the a lot of the advertising that it's out there, some of them really get it. And Apple is a, maybe almost a bit of a cliche of an example of a company that does advertising really well, but it's worth focusing on, right? So when the iPhone is being marketed these days, and I think the next one will be coming out in the next month, so we'll be broadly subjected to a whole fresh slew of this stuff. But you'll notice, like, it's not, oh my gosh, we've got 18, you know, mega, giga pixels, and we, you know, the processor, whatever, and all that, right? And they get to that point, right? If you go to this then, then at some point, on the Apple website, it'll talk about how it's the latest processor, and blah, blah, blah, and it's so much faster. But the messaging that they send out, right? Is something as simple as this. And so the implication here is, you are a, maybe a, you know, kind of a frustrated artist. You're you, you've been missing the tools to realize your inner artistic vision. And if, boy, if you have this iPhone, you're going to be like this guy, right? You're going to be living this fabulous, colorful life. You're going to be your your inner vision, and your artistic vision will be realized, and you are going to become this happy, actualized person, and that's again, pitching right to the top of the pyramid and and then obviously they'll get to the point where they talk about all those details. But again, if you don't attract them with fulfilling the dreams that they have, then you might not get to that. And again, your tto, exactly the same thing. The question is, what do you enable? What do you unlock? How do you help these people, these various audiences, that you have achieved the dreams that they, that they have, and then sort of work your way back down. And this doesn't have to be, by the way, just to make it clear, something that you have to sort of go on and on about and be crazy, right? That's like one, well, you know, written headline and a couple of key words, and then boom, you can get back to how you how you do it. I'm not asking you to. Sort of should. Wax rhapsodic, you know, the you know, for, you know, long time on end. I'm just saying that you want to make sure that you're framing the what that you do in terms of the why they would want it. And this is really very close to what I tell all of my startups to think about, especially with university based March startups. Again, the academic mindset is, is, is quite powerful, right? Like they come to me, they're like, Wow, we've ended in this kind of using this example of a drill, but obviously could be anything, so some semiconductor improvement or some new pharmaceutical or gene technology, right? But they come and they built this drill, and boy, are they excited about the drill, and they want to talk about the drill, and they want to talk about all the time it took to figure out how to get it to spin so fast, and it's diamond tipped and blah, blah, blah, right? And they really want to talk about that drill. But when you're selling the product, that all sort of doesn't matter, right? What really matters there's no, you know, nobody buys a drill because they want to own a drill. They buy a drill because they want a hole in the wall, or maybe even next level up. They don't want just a hole in the wall. They want to keep their spouse happy, who looked at the living room and said, there's no art on the wall. I want art on the wall, you better go make some. You know, make it work out. There are no wall so off goes the spouse to the hardware store to go buy a drill in order to put the hole in the hole in the wall, in order to hang the paintings, in order to keep the spouse happy, right? So there's these sort of layers of, like, why they would want this item, and once they get to the store, and there's 18 different drills, hopefully, the technology that you have and that you offer is obviously, boy, I mean, this is diamond tipped, and the 5400 RPMs and whatever it is, and this seems like the, you know, the smalls and the light isn't the battery lasts long is that's the drill that I'm going to want to work with. But again, they what drove them there isn't the fact that you have the sort of diamond tip, because nobody wants a drill again, just for the dear Joe fear, you know, the dear joy of owning a drill. So you want to describe the outcome, not the mechanics of it. The other thing that I work with university startups a lot, and I've mentioned this just a minute ago, is this idea that what things that the academic world values, and again, it's awesome that they want to be very precise, and you want to make sure that you understand the limitations of thing, and you highlight the unknowns. And you want to make sure that everyone understands that you know, on the one hand, this, on the other hand, that, and that will let the sort of the data draws to where we're, you know, let you draw your own conclusions. You know, we're just presenting the facts, right? And again, awesome for the academic world. Out in the business world, obviously, you need to present things in a different way, and you need to be so you're, you're enlisting followers suddenly, right? You're in, you're you're trying to get them excited about this vision, and you know how the world is going to work and how you're going to conquer cancer, right? And then you'll get back to all that. And one thing that is definitely a mindset shift for the founders, and broadly, I think those in academia, is this idea that, Oh, boy, like, you know, the academic communication mode is a quote, right way of doing things. And everything out there is the used car salesman approach. And I always describe it. I say, Listen, like a tuxedo is a fine outfit, and a bathing suit is a fine outfit. You just don't want to wear the wrong one. You don't want to show up at the at the symphony wearing a bathing suit, and you don't show up the beach when it in a tuxedo. And so you have to understand so when to use them. And again, I want to make sure that when you guys are talking about it, you are speaking in the language of the of the wish fulfillment and the dream and the hope fulfillment of each particular audience. And you then get down to the what they're going to do. So here's an example of what I see in and I'll show some examples of tto websites as well, but I wanted to sort of show how I see that on the academic mindset coming through on a on a startup website.

Speaker 2  23:52  
So this is a great examples as a startup that I was working with, and they'd invented this incredible technology where, as opposed obviously, post COVID, was particularly attractive, the idea that, wow, we want to make sure that that our disinfectants last a long time. We don't just spray it on the first time someone comes by with a cloth and wipes like all the disinfectant properties have been wiped away. So they figured out a way to make these, these, these chlorine based disinfectants, last a long time. You spray the stuff on, and then you add your disinfectant, and for the next three weeks, everything's great, but this is and so they described, they said, Well, what do we do? Well, we keep services free of bacteria and viruses, and we extend the life of these chlorine based disinfectants. Here's the thing, nobody woke up thinking, Man, if only my chlorine based disinfectant was like, you know, would last a lot longer, right? What they wake up is, you're a universe, you're a hospital administrator, and you're like, man, all my patients keep getting sick. Or you're at the you're at the kindergarten, and you're like, man, all the kids you know, keep coming on, you know, going home with colds and or you're, you're running a house and your kids are sick. Or you're, you're, you're running a food service establishment, and you're worried that someone's going to end up with salmonella, right? So you have, those are your worries, and then they're like, once you have that. Worry. Now you turn around and you say, Man, I wish I had something that would help. And then obviously, this product can pop up and help you at dream. But again, you the hospital administrator just wants a few or sick patient. So that's what this company should be talking about. And then, literally, obviously, you know, a woman peering through a microscope is the literal embodiment of the academic mindset. What you want is like the happy children. You want the patients who aren't getting sick, right? You want a gauzy image with a sunlight streaming through the window of happy people who are now living a more fulfilled life as a result of having this disinfectant so and so. The flip side is to, you know, a company like this that has spent years optimizing their membrane to manufacture green hydrogen better, right? Like they could talk about that till the cows come home. But the point is, man, you just made green hydrogen 78% cheaper. And now we can unleash the green hydrogen revolution, because we figured out this way to do it. And then obviously they can, you know, PhD to PhD, they can talk to, you know, for no end, about the mechanics of it and and so that's the way to, so reach the people with the need that they have, and then you explain what it is they want. So with that, let me go over to couple of the websites that I've seen of tto. And again, this is, I, you know, this is so very much so intended not to be a specific fashion of individual websites, and there's a large heterogeneity of tto websites I've seen. But I just wanted to point out a couple of these things, and I've blacked out or whited out here, in this case, the name, I hope none of you actually realize which universities is. I don't want that's not the point. I just want to highlight some to give you a bit of a sense of the types of things that I see and and again, we have these sort of three audiences. There's the faculty. We have the licensees, which could be the industries of startups. We have the university administration or the institutional administration, right? So the name of the headline should not be the name of your organization, right? Like, that's not that the fact that you're the Office of Technology Commercialization is like, not the important point, right? The The important point is, what do you do? What's the impact? I want you to make sure that you are clearly addressing the sort of outcome of what you do, and then you want to clearly address the the each of the audience that you do. And mechanically, this website, like most of yours, in terms of, like, it does, okay, right? Like, you're like, Okay, you can either submit an invention disclosure. So that's clearly targeting the audience of the faculty and researchers, right? Then you have the license and technology, and you can click through there, and you can do it, and it does sort of say, oh, you know, you're going to protect and commercialize. So that's sort of the, I guess, the somewhat addressing the mission. But again, there's, there's a lot of things that are that are sort of missing here, right? So, on the one hand, right? Really speaking to the why there's no speaking to the success that you guys have had and the vision that you have. Again, it's very, it's very, you know, sober, if you will. So a website, and I want to hear a little bit more about the work that you've done and the achievements that you had and the impact that your organization has reached. And I want that sort of mentioned in the headline, so that people understand that, wow, they've come to the place where this entire institution is actually making the impact on the outside world. You're not just a bureaucratic appendage to a large research institution. You're actually the place where, in many ways, like that, entire research institution is working for you guys, for you to enable the incredible impact that you guys achieve. And so if you can flip that in terms of messaging, you can also substantially improve the way that you guys are promoting your, your your group. So I want those, I want those things. And when you then, also, if I'm that technology licensee, right, I'm coming to this. It's like, When is the last time you went to a, you know, shopping website or, you know, so you got a broom and board or whatever you do, right? It's not just a list of like, you know, couches and chairs and tables. You're going to see nice photos. You're going to see maybe imagining that couch like in your beautiful home, right? You go to the supermarket, there's nice end caps and displays, right? There's, there's all of that. Again, might feel like used car salesmanship, but I also really want to make sure that it is mentioned and the, again, those are these are your products, and these are the products that breathe life and substantiate the claims that you're making, of the impact that your organization is able to make on the outside world. So I want to be very clear that this is something that is exciting, that is an incredible you've got this whole sort of veritable cornucopia of technologies, and they have these impacts. And let me show you some nice photos, and let me show you the impact that we've had with the previous technologies and how we've made it and again, to attract these licensees. Wow, we've, we, you know, we're, we've been a great partner with a bunch of these things. And maybe there's some logos, sort of highlighting that. Right? I want to see how that impact has been made. Because if you don't tell me that this is that, where the where the sort of impact meets the outside world, where your institution is able to do it, then you are also going to remain, you know, somewhat, you know, at risk of being more of an afterthought and an underfunded appendage to your larger organization. And so I want you to, I want you to capture that, capture that brass ring of impact. And here's another one, very similar. Again, technology development is not a headline. It could not be sort of dry or like, what's again, what's the sale, what's the benefit. And you've got the, you know, the sub headlines, services and contacts, again, totally accurate, professional. Nothing wrong with it, but this is where you want to talk about all the amazing stuff that you can do. And again, you want to have more powerful headlines, attractive layouts, clear navigation about the why, leading down to the what and and then with some clear individual sort of next steps that you want each of these two audiences, primarily you got to obviously your faculty and your licensees that they can take. So the way that I break it down for websites, for startups and again, very applicable here. You want to clearly separate your audiences. And most of you obviously do that. You got this sort of two main ones. You want to provide information. You want to provide social proof. Social proof is, is quotes and logos and anything that where the third party is talking about your success, which is something I want to pause and talk about for just a minute on, is if you walk into a restaurant and that restaurant is empty, do your immediate thought is, what is wrong here? Did somebody die eating here? What's what? What happened is this place not good? Is the chef left? Is there something wrong? You walk into a restaurant and it's bustling and it's lively, and everyone looks sort of happy and buzzing about, but there's that one great table still open at the at the window, and you're like, This is fabulous. This is going to be a great meal. You immediately walk in and have a completely different expectation, even if the restaurant itself is exactly the same that you had in the other scenario. And you talking about yourself and having other people, the these other people and these other voices that you bring in on your website. Those are these other diners in this restaurant scenario. And that can be people saying, Man, I loved working with these people, these you know, these people are great. I can't believe my my invention was able to

Speaker 2  32:33  
make such a big difference. It's the logos, maybe, of the companies that you've worked with. It's the industry partnerships. It's the anything that you can find where you can highlight, maybe the amount of dollars that you brought into your institution, anything that allows other that is essentially letting other people tell the audience that this place is great, just as the physical presence of the diners in the restaurant are essentially sending a message to you that weren't hired by the restaurant. They were just these are the quote real world people telling you, Wow, this place is good because they're voting with their feet and they're coming in and they're eating the meal. So I want you to also make sure that you've got other things on that website that are highlighting, other voices that are highlighting and again, that can be through physical presence, um, just logos and like it can be through actual sort of quotes. It can be, and obviously not quite as reference, you know, relevant to a tto. But for startups, those can be, you know, 384, five star reviews. It can be anything that indicates that the work that you guys are doing and the impact that you're having is being is being corroborated by a third party. And then the next thing is, obviously prioritize your top benefits. Again, sort of thinking down the pull pyramid. So thinking from the top in terms of presenting what you do, working your way down to a here are the things that you want to do. And a website, I never tire of saying is an action verb. The whole point of someone coming to your website is not where they get the information, and then can, like, wander off. The entire point, if they come to your website and don't do anything like you, might as well not have had the website. The entire point is to get people, move them down a conversion funnel. And so that would be even whether it's the whether it's the faculty who is like, man, one of these fine days, I really should submit my invention disclosure. You want to make sure that like you, you reach that person, you contact that person, you make sure that if there's a conversation you need to be having. You want that individual to be having a conversation with you. So you want to make sure that they're if they even if they're like, Hey, you think you might have an event disclosure, but you're not ready. You know, sign up for our newsletter, or get on our list, or get somehow on our radar screen. Same thing for if the guy from Monsanto comes to your website, like looking for a technology right? You want to make sure you get that contact. And you want to make sure that you you get that person onto your radar screen, or a startup comes to you, you want to make sure that they know about you and the events that you're going to be having and the like. So it's really important that you pick your battles well. And what's called the CTA, the call to action, right? And you might have multiple ones, right? Again, it might be everything from, you know? So. Call now or sign the invention disclosure now down to get on our website, or come to an event and the like. But you want to make sure that each of these key two funnel sides, or these two key audiences, that they're coming to you and and taking that action. And one of the things I want just a couple couple of VC websites. VC websites generally not that great. They're generally missing on the call to action, because they really, actually are somewhat oddly, sort of uninterested in having people just reach out to them. They typically have enough of that they're trying to filter their audience. More than that, they're the like. But still, there's some good examples, right? This is the the industry ventures site. They have nice social proof at the top. Here's the impact we've had that headline that is sort of speaking more to the vision of what they do. They have a process diagram. There's some success stories right there. They're really presenting themselves at a high level. They're not just saying, like, yeah, the mechanics are, then you're going to have a pitch meeting, and then you're going to have this, and then we're going to decide. And once every other week, on Tuesdays, our investment committee meets, and that kind of thing, right there. They're speaking to the wise and the inspiration, hopefully in the hope that the exciting founders look at that and say, Wow, these people would be great partners, right here's the gray lock website, also pretty good. It's kind of kind of dark. Maybe it's hard to read, but talking about the partnership they have, the startups, they have, the social proof component, they talk about the value that they create. They offer examples of success. They draw their attention to the thought leadership and the articles that they produce. Right? So there's all these different ways of making gray lock seem like a big partner, and they are pretty light on the sort of mechanics of the details, which are like always can come later. So one example I just wanted to quickly pull up is the idea of the of searching through these, through the inventions that you have. You typically, a lot of you have, you know, large portfolios of these technologies. I like the approach at Columbia and Penn, and I've seen this on a couple of other websites, right? They take so it's moving away just from the list of these, of these things, and actually getting toward the description of it, and letting you sort of visualize what it is, and so you can drill down and explore and more quickly find it. So this is just one idea. But again, it's it's it's it's starting to tackle the challenge of having this large, kind of unwieldy and frankly, kind of often kind of a dry list of technologies, and starting to, you know, aerate it and make it into a visual thing, so that you as the licensee can can go exploring what they have. So anything that gets you away from a scientific catalog and and realizing that your audience, although they might be very scientifically minded, are still humans, and that they still they're attracted to pretty things and exciting descriptions, like we all are. And then you can get to that. And this is obviously just one piece of the puzzle. I want to talk next about the stories that are involved and so that we can all so we can think about these things correctly. But this is, again, I like that visualization. Just wanted to mention that briefly. So now the story. So now we're getting closer to the sort of Better World Project, which you are all going to submit in the follow up to this call. But the fact is that, you know, stories and narratives is something that we've been doing for millennia. Like and facts are just dots there. If you say that, you know, our technology is, you know, now can do 100,000 base pairs instead of 10,000 base pairs when you're doing your gene sequencing, you know, that's just sort of a fact, but when you want to sort of really paint a picture of what it can do, and this, the human mind just naturally wants to look up at a bunch of stars and a bunch of random dots, and they want to tell a story, then you are going to get the sort of convincing is going to be a lot higher Like and so we are always going to do that, and it's going to stick with us, because it's more memorable. It's going to allow people to fill in the blanks, right? They can see the whole bear just based on five things. It's going to track, you know, so big reaction in your audience, and it's going to help sell it. And again, I know that there's the academic instinct is that, fact, sell. And I grew up in an academic household, and there's a I have a strong bias towards hard sciences as anyone, but everyone loves a good story. They stick, they convince. And you know, fact, just never go viral. And so if you want someone to be impressed with what you do, you need to, you need to paint the larger picture, and then people will fill in the dots for you, which is why I do not want these types of things again. Obviously, you'll get to the facts. There's nothing wrong with this. But if you just if your website just has a sort of a laundry list of these kinds of of technologies where the headlines are things like applications and technology overview, then you haven't packaged the exciting inventory that you guys own in a way that is going to ladder up to the achievements and the goals and the dream fulfillment that you guys truly represent as the most important component of your academic institution and your research institution. So I want to make sure that you are all so Fauci. Focused on that and framing them correctly, and then, obviously, at some point it's going to get down to this. So let's turn to the story. So here we go. So there's a relatively unassuming, better world story project page. The real work you're going to do is away from this page. You're going to ultimately just cut and paste your story right into here. But the magic is what happens here in this box. And I really want you all to submit a story to the BWP, just at the least as a practice for your website. Hopefully, you know, you'll obviously take whatever you write for the better world project submission and you're going to transfer that to your website. You should always repurpose everything. I hope you do it for your top 10, your top 50

Speaker 2  40:36  
technologies, whatever you everybody, every tto professional I've talked to, they always have their set of technologies that they're most excited about and that they're sort of like the sort of the jewels of their of their collection. And those should, at the very least, have a larger sort of feature around them, and attractive imagery and great discussion. These are the things that we should be selling, and they should be sold in, again, just to be clear, in that sort of larger purpose of the impact that you're going to have. So what does a great story do? And again, it's the classic journalism one on one, stuff, right? Like the what, when, who, how and why, with that real focus on the why, and I find that you want to make sure that you're describing that the really, the who and the Why are crucial, the some of the other things, you know, so we'll come out of that. But again, that's what makes the personalized story. The people that that did it, and the work that they did, and the challenges that they overcome, and the impressions that they had and the like, are going to really sort of color, colorize the story. And then obviously, again, to blog this point is that, though, what's the impact and what's this going to have? And I thought this, I don't know if this is too small for you guys to read this. I thought this Time Magazine's summary of a of a of a Purdue invention of a particularly white paint was, was a really good example of, like, packing an awful lot of punch into a short into a short number of sentences, right? So it says, the pain. So it sets it up with the paint on a white building reflects 80, 90% of the sunlight strikes it. The rest of the light warms the surrounding area. And importantly, what does that mean? It raises it raising air conditioning bills, right? So you've established, like, what the problem is, and that it's sort of that it's that it's warming the environment. It's going to raise you air conditioning unit. But then here's the solution, right? This water paint is made. This is what is made of chemicals that reflect UV rays. Now this reflect 98% of the light, which reduces, again, what's the impact of that? It reduces AC use by 40% so you immediately frame the problem in terms of the actual sort of real world problem it's having, not just saying, like, oh yeah. Like, we've made a paint that's whiter, and here's the stats about it, like, Well, the problem is, is that, oh my, we're all running our air conditioner too much, and we could reduce that by 40% then you introduce the quote that the heat is reflected into deep space, and it can keep our cities cooler, right? So the important thing about a quote is that it is, it is the thing that you couldn't say. It's the it's the editorialization that you couldn't say in the body of your text, because it's sort of an opinion, and it's maybe a fanciful description, like reflected into deep space, right? Like, Well, is it really not immediately right? First goes into the atmosphere, etc. But like, it's, it allows him to, sort of, you know, the Ruan, to sort of paint this larger picture about what it is and what it means and the outcome it's going to have. And so you are always trying to put the editorialization into the quote. So those are nice quotes. And then, and then it's like, it paints the bigger picture. And the team says it also has a lightweight paint for airplanes, cars and even spaceships, right? So it, so it sort of packs this bigger vision. Like, wow. This isn't just white paint, wow. Man, this could result in better spaceships. Man, this is unbelievable. It's gonna slash air conditioning, costs. It's going to keep our cities cooler. We're going to build better patients like Man, you've, you've, in a very short number of words, you've painted a remarkably large picture of the drama and impact and excitement that a new kind of paint just might have. So, so that's a good example. Again, you don't need to have a lot of things in order to make a sort of a big impact the the Better World web project. Website also has a good example of these of us saying this, this, this honey crisp apple story is, is very good. It establishes the drama, you know, of the impact and the hard work that it took to get there, and the economic impact that a humble Apple could have. And it has some good quotes that sort of editorialize about, you know, the iPhone of apples, and again, things that are not facts, but are sort of these, these sort of fanciful opinions. It describes the impact that it's had for the University of Minnesota. It's a little bit weak on the tto involvement, which is something I often find with BWP submissions, is that you kind of forget the fact that we're really trying to do is emphasize the enzymatic role that the tto alphas has between taking this amazing technology and having the impact in the outside world. You the guys that made it happen. So I want to make sure that they can emphasize and that was a little bit short changed here in this article for. Has a nice kicker. The kicker is sort of like the final quote or the kind of little closing sentence of an article, in this case, school children working to get the Honeycrisp Apple named as the state Apple of Minnesota. So, so that was sort of a nice little, sort of finisher to that. So you can read that as a good example. Again, obviously, the internet's full of awesome stories about things. And I want you to think that the, you know, the wonderful articles that you read and whatever, whatever, whatever your preferred publication is, you know, sort of Forbes or Tech Crunch or the Atlantic, or whatever it is, like the same messages and methods can be applied as you start describing the awesomeness of the inventions that you have and the impact that you guys have. So to the mistakes that we often see is that these, these, again, you just, you tend to have that academic mindset. You're not really the story. You're missing the impact of what it can mean. There's no sort of numbers and quotes and market sizes and statistics that are really sort of shaping the impact, maybe the alternatives, the horrible alternative, if the world didn't have this one particular device like this, is the like, horrible dystopian world that we're stuck in. And then with this thing, all these people are gonna be happy, and the lame are gonna walk again, and the like, right? We're going to unleash this sort of happiness onto the world. You're missing that tto support component. And frankly, some of these submissions can be a little bit boring as a result. Because when we don't have those things, we don't have those exciting quotes of the people saying, Man, this is the iPhone of apples, then we sort of miss maybe the little sort of human drama that we can create around these inventions that we have and so. And my message to you today is that if you have a if you can write a great, Better World project submission, you can have a great tto, and you can have a tto that truly is has the recognition that it should have as the most important really, the front door in many ways of there's all this research happening at your institution and and you're the one who actually makes it into the outside world. And framing it that way, I think is going to make sort of a dramatic impact. The one way I always think about it with the narrative triangle is I always describe to my startups, and I think there's a good closing message here for for the tto is, is that there's sort of three pieces that you are going to that a startup needs to have on its website. There's three stories that they need to tell in order to make that impact, right? So the first is literally, like the here's the product, here's the solution that we have, and here's how it's going to improve customers live again, and not just the what, but we're going to go one level up on the pole pyramid, and we're talking about the how it actually improves people's lives. So that's obviously, you know, core of it. But then here's also the why we're doing it, right? So this is, like, the personal mission. This is how we see the world. And again, I think there's an important component of that that the tto website should have, again, about, you know, what drives you guys to do this, right? This is where you're making the impact. This is where you're helping all this incredible stuff get out of the lab and into the world, and changing people's lives to the better, and your personal motivations can be an important component of that, and should be emphasized. And then the third is this, others is the social proof. It's that third story. It's the other people telling it. You talking about how great you are in the world. Changing Views that and actions that you're taking is lovely, but having other people tell it is even more powerful. So I want you to look at those, go back and look at the services from the perspective your audiences, and think about that. I want you to think about the whys that you're going to have as you go up that level and sort of up the up the chain there, if you're going to favor the sort of business communication I want you to have action on your website and results and provide those clear next steps. That's what's going to make your outreach to faculty effective. That's going to make your outreach to all the people that you meet in industry or the startups that you work with realize that you're a valuable partner, because you're going to help them achieve their dreams and and realm. Remember that you have this sort of collection of stories, and each one, if each one is great, then your tto will be great. And so therefore, you know, submit your best ones or many to to the Better World project. The deadline is next month. So I want you, I think it's September 20. And so I want you, you got, you got the perfect amount of time to, sort of, you know, enough of a deadline without it being a panic, to get some great stories and get those submitted. There's a more resources on the on the autumn website that I highly encourage you to go after. There's one that's sort of the basic technology transfer for university faculties and staff. And so this is, like a lot of the mechanics that I then want you to wrap around with the, you know, with the messaging that you're going to upgrade as a result of this. And then obviously, I hope that all of you will be in in DC or in Maryland, I guess next, next March, for our annual meeting, where we're also having narratives for a better world, we're going to have a session, a. On, on, on messaging and the like. We have an amazing, amazing set of panelists. So I want you to come and join us for that. And with that, let me open it up for for Q and A and see if anyone has any questions that I could, that I could help answer, or your conversation we can start. And please reach out to me too. Um, auto pull com on my website. A little bit more about who I am and what I do and what I think. Please send me an email. And I hope, I hope, I think I probably know a good number of you, but I hope I meet the rest after this as a result of this. So let me stop at this point and see whether any questions have come in.

Speaker 2  50:42  
Donve We get to any, any, any questions here. Let me stop the share, see what's coming on in the chat, september 30 for the deadline. Okay, perfect.

Speaker 1  50:52  
There is one question in the in the Q and A box, someone asked, when you talk about impact driven headlines. Can you give an example of how that works in terms of SEO? Often the headlines are designed for H tag SEO, revelant relevance, yeah. Sorry, so

Speaker 2  51:11  
I wouldn't let the the tail wag the dog in terms of SEO, honestly, the audiences that you guys are trying to reach is pretty tightly defined, right? It's like, it's, you've got the all the people that you're the researchers at your institution, you in the faculty. So that's a that's, they're not sort of randomly Googling around for that. I and I would guess that the startups that are in the kind of ecosystem that you have, as well as the institutional partners that you have are also probably not sort of randomly Googling around for it. So I wouldn't worry too much about that. And again, don't forget that a lot of the sort of the mechanics that you're the Office of Technology, you know, transfer, or whatever that those are things that you were you will have in the sub headlines that you'll describe, that you can mention. I just don't think they need to be sort of in the headline of it. They will still in the, sort of the breadcrumb structure of your institution's website. I think they're still going to, you know, they'll still be the tto website. And so if someone Google's just, oh, I want and need to get to the tto, then that will still pop up. So I don't think you need to worry too much about that. I think you're better off really focusing on the sort of why this matters. If you know, if you want, you can also put it in this, in the Super head, you know, Office of Technology Transfer, and then below it, you know, making the world a better place. And that will be enough for anyone who is searching, especially coming from your institution, quickly typing in, you know, tto, they'll still pop up on your website.

Speaker 1  52:49  
Donald, there's another question here. I understand we have to have the value purpose on the website and talk about the greater society's game. But in addition to those bigger picture messages, should we still have the specific technology overview and its application?

Speaker 2  53:08  
So, yeah, so, I mean, again, you're always going to sort of get down to, you know, kind of down to the brass tacks about what, what the technology, if I understand the correct question correctly, what those important, what those questions are, and what those technologies are and their impact. So I'm not saying that we're sort of getting rid of the facts, if you will, to sort of paint the big fluffy pictures, but I'm just saying that I want you to frame the impact that you're having first, and then obviously get down to it and describe the so the details down below is that, am I getting the question right? Was there a follow up?

Speaker 1  53:51  
Emily said, Yes, thank you. And there is one more question here. Otto, it is interesting to hear you your comments on tto websites. Unfortunately, most TTOs do not have any control on what gets posted and how, however, we can control the content of the marketing sheets or non confidential summaries. Can you comment on some immediate changes that can better reflect the impact of the technologies?

Speaker 2  54:22  
Better the How to describe the impact of the technologies. I mean, so for let me first address the first part of the question, which is like this idea that you know that you don't have the control of the website, and I totally appreciate that, that that's something that sort of Can, can be out of your hands, or at least unless you ask for. It might be something that'll just sort of provided by the some other office, and I appreciate that. And there's, obviously, there's, you know, there's going to be limitations that you're that you're subjected to. I would also say that, in my experience, that often that there's also, there's, you know, there might be a default, but that doesn't mean that you can't help work and change that default. So I would hope that you sort of do what you can in order to, in order to make that impact. And then, I'm sorry, I've the what was the second half of the question,

Speaker 1  55:12  
can you comment on some immediate changes that can better reflect the impact of technologies?

Speaker 2  55:18  
Yeah, I mean, well, so again, it's like, you know, so again, you know, the researcher might have, you know, sort of dumped on your lap, this idea of like, wow, we've, you know, we've come up with a better way of manufacturing microchips, and now we're going to have this new substrate technology that's a drop in replacement, or a better battery, or whatever it might be. And it might be up to you to help, maybe even work with the researcher. And I've often had this with founders, where I go to them, they tell me, they Hey, they come up with this, make technology right. And one of the most powerful questions is, like, who cares? And then just, you know, almost, it's almost this jarring question, where they're like, Yeah, well, I get well, they should take it for granted that obviously, if we can, you know, accelerate the charging process for lithium ion battery by 32% that that's, you know, everyone's gonna immediately get what that means. And the answer is, like, no, but like, so, you know, and sort of on an immediate level, like, oh, yeah, I get that. Like, 30 faster is better, right? But you know, what does that mean? Does that suddenly, does that? It's gonna unlock changes in our society. Now suddenly, that's going to hasten the transition to the electric automobile. It's going to help reduce maybe climate change. It's going to, it's going to it's going to enable a whole new, maybe crop of of new business models, because now these taxis are able to whatever it is. So there's always that sort of next step. Asked, like, what does that mean? Why? You know, there's the, there's in the, in the, in the business world. So for the many in the manufacturing, there's sort of the process of five, Whys right? So someone comes to you says, you know, sir, the the the you know, the the loom is broken, and we can't manufacture it, you know, shirts anymore. Why? Well, it's because the whatever the power went out. Well, Why'd the power go well, the power went out because the generator burger. Why the generator breakdown? That's because we're out of gasoline. Why are we out of gasoline? Because the Civil War, you know, whatever, something else happened. And if you ask enough questions, you kind of get to the root problem. And I think for the same reason, if you ask a couple of whys about, like, why does this technology matter? Well, why would that? Why would it matter that it's 30% faster charging time? Well, what you know? Why does this? You know? What? What does that have? If you dig into that a little bit, it'll unlock a lot of things that maybe the were sort of assumed or maybe hadn't even really been fully, sort of cognitively processed by the researchers just so excited about the fact that they've been able to solve this really super hard technical problem. So I encourage you to just keep digging, and then that's going to uncover the stuff that you're going to want to mention at the top to frame the impact that this amazing new technology can have.

Speaker 1  57:53  
Those are all of the questions. Otto, thank you so much for answering times yes. On behalf, on behalf of autumn, I would like to thank you for joining us this afternoon and for the informative presentation, and thank you again to our sponsor, Marshall Gerstein. A recording of this webinar will be available for viewing in the autumn Learning Center within a week of this event, and is included with all of our attendees registrations, please be sure to complete the webinar evaluation, which will open immediately when you sign off this session. And thank you for being part of today's presentation. Thank you again for joining us today, Otto, and have a great afternoon, everyone. Thank

Unknown Speaker  58:35  
you, everybody. It's great. You're ready to chat. Bye, bye, bye.

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