Orin Herskowitz, executive director of Columbia Technology Ventures, is sipping gourmet coffee at a bistro across the street from the Manhattan Mall, but he hardly needs the caffeine to amplify his excitement about the innovation scene at his college. Columbia Technology Ventures—the Ivy League university’s main technology-transfer initiative—has chalked up an impressive list of accomplishments ever since Herskowitz joined the office in 2006. “We get 300 faculty-submitted inventions a year,” he says, about 60 percent in life sciences and the rest in other technologies. “I like to say we have everything from iPhone apps to cancer drugs,” Herskowitz says.
Herskowitz has good reason to boast. The former management consultant has spent the last few years whipping Columbia’s tech transfer efforts into shape, instituting a host of new processes designed to speed good ideas to market. It’s working: In 2009 (the most recent year for which data is available), Columbia pulled in $154 million in licensing revenues—more than any other university—according to the Association of University Technology Managers (AUTM). Columbia’s tech-transfer arm now spawns about a dozen startups a year. “Over the last two years, the whole university has come together around entrepreneurship in a way that feels new and energized,” Herskowitz says.
To read the full, original article click on this link: Columbia University’s Tech Transfer Guru, Orin Herskowitz, on Turning IT, Biotech, and Cleantech Ideas Into Businesses | Xconomy
Author: Arlene Weintraub
