U-M hits a new record with an invention a day

Wednesday, October 14, 2009 | Source: Concentrate

The University of Michigan always likes to compare itself to the academic elite, like MIT, Stanford and Johns Hopkins. Now it has more than a few inventions to stand on when it makes that assertion.

The university pushed the number of inventions it creates to 350 for the 2009 fiscal year, an average of almost one per day. That's in comparison to 487 for MIT, 401 for Standford and 282 for Johns Hopkins in 2007, the marquee names for research, development, tech transfer and commercialization.

"We're in the big leagues now," says Ken Nisbet, executive director of the University of Michigan Office of Technology Transfer.

U-M has sharpened its focus on developing its research and transforming it into new spin-off businesses in recent years. For instance, the university had 158 inventions in 1999 and was only in the mid 200s per year as recently as five years ago. Those numbers started to really race upward in 2007 when U-M hit 327 inventions.

Although these numbers are impressive, the university is beginning to focus more and more on the quality of these inventions, patents and other assorted bits of research.

"It's not even a question of quantity," Nisbet says. "It's whether there is a business that can spin off from it."

Source: Ken Nisbet, executive director of the U-M Office of Technology Transfer.
Writer: Jon Zemke