By Nick Todaro (Ruston Daily Leader)

Louisiana Tech’s efforts to sell innovative technology have become a topic of conversation in the marketing industry.

The university was recently featured in an edition of the trade publication Intellectual Property Marketing Advisor for its work with one of the inventors tooling about the university’s Institute for Micromanufacturing, a research unit focused on nanotechnology.

Ville Kaajakari’s “Shoe Power,” which turns energy generated by human footfalls into electricity, and Tech’s approach to selling it are the subject of an article in a recent issue of the publication.

Once a professor’s idea shows promise, Tech’s intellectual property division gets to work.

In his case, Kaajakari said he provided the university with “raw materials,” and the intellectual property division took the idea and ran with it, selling it aggressively.

Rich Kordal, the unit’s director, explained the process as something akin to pursuing a new job.

“Typically, when we try to market something, we do initial market research and identify likely licensing candidates or companies in a similar area that might benefit,” Kordal said.

That actually involves students. The university’s Innovative Venture Research class, taught by John Pratt, pulls together business students and technical-field majors for brainstorming.

“We give them new technologies as a kind of class project,” Kordal said. “They actually help or evaluate and assess the technology, like its commercial or business or technical aspects. They get a great learning experience, and they help us get some good leads.”

If the technology is fit for its own business, the class helps make that apparent, he said, and if it is better suited for outside marketing, then comes the legwork of selling the idea.

“We do targeted marketing, sending out non-confidential information to those companies that are in line with what we’re doing,” Kordal said.

He said it’s like a resume — explaining the advantages, benefits and characteristics of the technology.

“A lot of times it’s the business people that are reading these, not so much the technical people,” Kordal said. “We hope to generate enough interest that they want to ask for more information.”

Once a company bites, for example if a shoe company says they want to know more about the details of Kaajakari’s device, how it works and details like cost, Kordal said secrecy comes into play.

The university uses a nondisclosure agreement at that stage.

“Mainly, that’s meant to help us preserve patent rights,” Kordal said. “You don’t want that to constitute a public disclosure, especially if you’re thinking about filing a patent or have filed a patent.”

With Shoe Power, the marketing effort centers around the device’s potential to be able to charge cell phones, personal data assistants, iPods and other small electronic devices, and Kordal and company have been working on firms like Apple and Nike looking for interest.

The IVR class has also had success with other concepts, Kordal said, including helping score a past licensing agreement on a lens technology invented at Tech. A Palo Alto, Calif.-based company called Holochip licensed the technology for lenses with variable focal lengths that can enable cell phone cameras to zoom, Kordal said.

The National Science Foundation has taken note by giving the university a second NSF Partnership for Innovation grant, which Kordal said is a rare award. He said the three-year, $600,000 boost will go to a program called Venture Enhancement Teams for Commercialization of University Intellectual Property.

“It’s a year-long program where we put together teams and they help us get some of our promising technology built into prototypes,” he said.

Prototyping helps bridge the “valley of death,” Kordal said — when a technology in its early stage shows promise, but companies want to see further development before buying in.