Open Access Paper
9 April 2013 Moving technologies from the test tube to commercial products
Robert G. Bryant
Author Affiliations +
Abstract
Successful technologies include objects, processes, and procedures that share a common theme; they are being used to generate new products that create economic growth. The foundation is the invention, but the invention is a small part of the overall effort. The pathway to success is understanding the competition, proper planning, record keeping, integrating a supply chain, understanding actual costs, intellectual property (IP), benchmarking, and timing. Additionally, there are obstacles that include financing, what to make, buy, and sell, and the division of labor i.e. recognizing who is best at what task. Over the past two decades, NASA Langley Research Center (LaRC) has developed several commercially available technologies. The approach to the commercialization of three of these inventions; Langley Research Center-Soluble Imide (LaRC-SI, Imitec Inc.), the Thin Layer Unimorph Driver (THUNDER, FACE International), and the Macrofiber Composite (MFC, Smart Material Corp.) will be described, as well as some of the lessons learned from the process. What makes these three inventions interesting is that one was created in the laboratory; another was built using the previous invention as part of its process, and the last one was created by packaging commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) materials thereby creating a new component.
© (2013) COPYRIGHT Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE). Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.
Robert G. Bryant "Moving technologies from the test tube to commercial products", Proc. SPIE 8691, Nanosensors, Biosensors, and Info-Tech Sensors and Systems 2013, 869104 (9 April 2013); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2016736
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KEYWORDS
Actuators

Microsoft Foundation Class Library

Semiconducting wafers

Adhesives

Composites

Manufacturing

Ceramics

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