CCI's online Inventor Toolkit designed to keep ideas flowing

摘要

With the release of its new online Inventor Toolkit to guide staff through the technology transfer process, Cleveland Clinic Innovations hopes to build on what has already been a stellar record. Over the last 14 years, CCI - the commercialization branch of Cleveland Clinic - has fostered the creation of over 70 companies (representing over $1 billion in equity investment), overseen more than 500 licensing deals, and guided 660 patents through the approval process. Unveiled in May of this year, the Inventor Toolkit aims to provide a comprehensive, one-stop portal of guidance and support, improve researcher workflow, and foster further idea development by increasing inventors' ease of access to CCI's full scope of innovation resources. While some of the information contained in the Toolkit can be found elsewhere on Cleveland Clinic intranet sites, CCI's in-house development team sought a more streamlined way to provide inventors with access to vital commercialization resources. Protected behind a firewall, the Toolkit is only accessible to Cleveland Clinic employees. "We've put it all here in a format that they're accustomed to from our internal site," says Susan Bernat, CCI's general manager of technology and communications. (See Figure 1 on page 172.)