Technology entrepreneurs in Ukraine increased their business skills at two Idea to Market Workshops, which took place in Lviv from Sept. 28-29, 2009 and Sevastopol from Oct. 1-2, 2009. These workshops focused on helping scientists and engineers bring innovations into the marketplace, engage with business and industry, increase their understanding of intellectual property rights, build strategic partnerships with national and international corporations and learn how to plan and operate their own business and license their technologies. Both attracted many researchers, administrators, and business and government representatives, with more than 70 attending the workshop in Lviv, and more than 50 attending in Sevastopol.

Expert trainers Jack Fraser, the deputy director of the Office of Technology Transfer at the University of Rochester, and Ram Mohan, president and CEO of inBAC (International Business Acceleration Center), gave presentations on the fundamentals of intellectual property, intellectual property commercialization, university-industry collaboration and intellectual property protection, team-building, proposal writing, technology valuation and market assessment, technology licensing and royalty rates, capital financing models, venture capital fundraising and effective communication. Veteran business development professionals and local legal advisors also utilized real world case-studies as well as their personal experiences to increase participants' understanding of all aspects of technology commercialization.

Based on the results of the post-event evaluation, the workshops were well received in both Lviv and Sevastopol-100% of the participants in both cities found the workshop to be valuable or extremely valuable and 100% of participants would recommend the workshop to others. Eighty percent of participants in Lviv and 45% of participants in Sevastopol indicated that they planned on submitting a proposal to the 2009 Business Partnership Grant Competition.

The STEP Business Partnership Grant Competition was also announced at the workshops. This competition-conducted by CRDF and the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine-promotes research and development partnerships between companies and teams of scientists to develop new commercial opportunities of economic benefit to both parties.

For more information on the Business Partnership Grant competition, please visit: http://www.crdf.org/funding/funding_show.htm?doc_id=1034127, or contact Maggie Sobotka at msobotka@crdf.org.      

 

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