MOYNIHAN: How technology transfer office websites can better serve their stakeholders

On March 30, I will be leading a webinar detailing “Tips for Managing TTO Website Design, Content & Maintenance” for fellow technology transfer professionals across the country, hosted by the Association of University Technology Managers. This focus comes at a great point for Indiana University Research and Technology Corp., as we are currently in the midst of a significant website update. We want to incorporate best practices and include worthwhile information for our innovative ecosystem.

The website for a technology transfer organization dictates an important first impression for its audience. We want to demonstrate to the viewer that this is the front door to a motivated and innovative research commercialization organization and provide value to our visitors.

Technology transfer offices have two important groups of stakeholders that visit the site:

1. Internal inventors looking for resources, guidance, and process, and;
2. External industry partners interested in available technologies and areas of expertise.

Failing to serve these stakeholders effectively leads to being seen as unhelpful and stale, which is detrimental to the reputation of the technology transfer office. Poor performance on these gateway services essentially drives away potential business partners and can easily be avoided with the right website design and strategy.

In the webinar, I will be talking in more detail about what content is vital to display on the website. These are the three aspects I see as most important:

1. Identify and focus your audience to lead them to their areas of the site. Inventors are typically searching for very different information than industry technology scouts. Clear messaging is imperative to direct visitors quickly and painlessly.
2. Showcase your technology portfolio with well-written descriptions in lay language and appropriate development information to highlight the technologies that are available to license. Even if a simple Google search happens to pull up one individual technology page, you can make it compelling to the visitor to search for other technologies that may fit their needs.
3. Include fresh success stories and updated news and events to demonstrate that your technology transfer office and university are active and engaged in innovation and commercialization. We want our visitors to understand we are recognized professionals in our fields of expertise and easy to work with – thus promoting their inclination to contact us.

Ultimately, we want our technology transfer website to improve our relationships with both our internal and external stakeholders. Fundamentally, this means that the website must be easy to navigate and be useful to those visitors. I look forward to implementing these facets in our own website!

To register for the March 30 “Tips for Managing TTO Website Design, Content & Maintenance” webinar, visit https://register.autm.net/events/registration.aspx?event=WEB160312

Katherine Moynihan is a technology manager at Indiana University Research and Technology Corp., which actively engages the strengths of Indiana University to support the health, economic, and social development of Indiana, the nation, and the world through technology commercialization and business and economic development. You can contact Katherine at (317) 278-1948, kmoyniha@iu.edu.