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| Working with a university on product R&D? |
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| cvanc:
Anyone got experience doing this? I'm working on a new product design that has aspects outside of my expertise. I'd like to enlist a university to fill in the gaps. Has anyone here "been there, done that" and would you be willing to share your experience? I'd be grateful for any insight you can offer. |
| EEVblog:
--- Quote from: cvanc on January 12, 2020, 11:16:20 am ---Anyone got experience doing this? I'm working on a new product design that has aspects outside of my expertise. I'd like to enlist a university to fill in the gaps. Has anyone here "been there, done that" and would you be willing to share your experience? I'd be grateful for any insight you can offer. --- End quote --- Is this research type aspects, or just practical engineering aspects outside of your expertise? If it's the latter then I wouldn't be engaging a university for that, but a design house or design contractor instead. |
| cvanc:
--- Quote from: EEVblog on January 12, 2020, 11:46:37 am ---Is this research type aspects, or just practical engineering aspects outside of your expertise? --- End quote --- You know, I really can't tell you. It's advanced stuff to me and certainly novel for the market I intend to be in. But I don't know if it's everyday stuff for other industries. So I'm not sure where the dividing line between research and engineering might be. Does that make sense? |
| profdc9:
Let me explain from my experience what a university can and can't do for R&D. Universities have professors and facilities. Professors have their own research agendas. If you can find one with research goals that align with yours, great. However, there is a possibility that they take your money and don't advance your product with the urgency you require. Secondly, there is student and staff labor available to do the work. Student labor must ultimately be justified by either a research publication or thesis. Therefore, something that is not publishable research is not justifiable for student labor. Secondly, student labor varies a lot in quality, from truly excellent, brilliant students to students barely scraping by enough to stay in academia. You don't have a lot of quality control here. As for staff labor, they are not restricted in whether or not they do research or commercial work. But as a default, the IP of any work performed at a university is owned by the university. You may be able to negotiate a license to the IP, perhaps an exclusive license. You probably will have to pay for the prosecution of any patents even though you don't own the IP, though usually the more you contribute to the prosecution, the more favorable terms you can obtain for the use of the IP. Some licensing and venture offices at universities are a pleasure to work with. Some are mostly interested in covering their own backside and won't agree to anything reasonable. So it depends. Development type work, past the proof-of-principle stage, is rarely justified in the university environment. So while you might get something that is shown to work well enough to get a research publication (which usually means just barely), getting past that point in the university is difficult to do. This is not to knock the university and its goals, but university research is intended to produce publications and educate students and not necessarily produce products. University professors start companies to create products. If all you need is expertise, you may be better served by engaging a professor on a private basis as a consultant outside of his or her university activities. Many universities allow this. Make sure if you do this you know what projects the professor does at the university and that these projects are specifically excluded in a consulting contract so that the university can not lay claim to your work. As for facilities, you can often gain access to university facilities for a fee. For microfabrication or other specialized equipment, this can be a useful alternative to commercial facilities. Universities are frequently looking to share the cost of their expensive-to-maintain facilities. You may need to engage some staff at the university to operate the equipment. I think purely operating equipment is not considered as generating IP. |
| coppice:
I agree with profdc9. If you need to develop some technology - say how to sense something, how to measure something, or an algorithm - university assistance can work out really well. Just be very careful not to rely on them for anything we might classify as product development. You might be lucky, and find someone with the right skills and motivation to produce a polished product, but its really risky. |
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