BEING INNOVATIVE: LESSONS LEARNED FROM THE PRACTICE OF TECHNOLOGY COMMERCIALIZATION

Innovation has emerged as a critical priority for organizations of all types to ensure prosperity and future success. In these times of sluggish economic performance, financial austerity, and intense global competition, every organization, including higher education, needs to implement processes and a culture of innovation that deliver more value from every available resource. Engineers must be the leaders of this implementation. Despite the attention to innovation, the philosophies and best practices of "being innovative" are still emerging. Just as the philosophies and academic discipline of leadership have emerged over the last decades, it is believed that innovation will follow the same path. Concepts will be developed from practicing innovation stage development projects and observing and recording best practices from successful outcomes. Rose-Hulman Ventures, a technology commercialization program, is described where corporate partners bring concepts, research results, and intellectual property and teams of faculty, staff, and students develop designs, models, and prototypes as part of the commercialization process. Over ten years of operation, the program has worked with hundreds of industrial clients in a broad range of industry segments. These projects come after the research stage and fall in the critical innovation stage of development where technologies are prepared for success in the marketplace. Through these projects, several guiding principles and best practices have emerged for the process of innovation. The paper summarizes eight "best practices" learned from these innovation-stage projects. In a broader sense, the best practices are appropriate not only for technology commercialization projects, but as guidelines of how to "be innovative" for both individuals and organizations. These eight best practices will be supported both by current literature in innovation management and the experiences of a decade of innovation and education success.