New guide offers assistance to UW-Madison entrepreneurs

University of Wisconsin-Madison faculty and staff interested in launching technology-based businesses can now access a new resource to help them through the process of taking a good idea to the marketplace.

"A Guide for New Business Ventures at the University of Wisconsin-Madison," is now available as an electronic publication on the Web site of the UW-Madison Office of Corporate Relations (OCR).

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The new guide begins with a section on the general issues faculty members should consider when starting a business. WARF’s policies and criteria for licensing technology to a faculty start-up company are discussed next, followed by a description of the university’s policies regarding business ventures. The guide also includes a brief introduction to business planning, as well as instructions on where to find additional resources and help.

Prepared by the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF) with the support of OCR, the guide provides faculty and staff with a road map for navigating WARF’s and the university’s procedures regarding start-up companies, as well as a list of university resources and outside professionals offering assistance to new businesses.

WARF and OCR view the guide as just one more tool among a host of excellent campus resources available through the University Research Park, the Weinert Center for Entrepreneurship, the UW-Madison Small Business Development Center and others.

"This guide is meant to complement and amplify what the university community is already offering faculty and staff whose ideas and research suggest new products and services for the marketplace," says Charles Hoslet, OCR’s managing director. "At the same time, it fills a need we saw for a concise listing of the start-up company policies, guidelines and resources that UW-Madison and WARF have developed over the years."

OCR, which was opened in mid-2003, is charged with finding and supporting ways for the university to work with the business community, a task, Hoslet explains, that includes helping faculty and staff explore how their ideas and research can become commercial enterprises.

Joining OCR in supporting UW-Madison’s faculty and staff entrepreneurs is WARF. Founded in 1925, WARF patents inventions arising from university research and licenses the technology to companies for commercialization. Since 1993 – when WARF helped a pair of UW-Madison scientists launch the local biotech company, Third Wave Technologies, Inc. – the organization has also provided assistance to campus researchers who want to license UW-Madison technology to start new businesses.

"Much of the technology we patent is at a very early stage, so it’s often best developed by the faculty member who originally created it," says Carl Gulbrandsen, WARF’s managing director. "That’s why we have a start-up initiative to support and encourage the entrepreneurial efforts of faculty and staff, and why we’ve created this guide."

To download the guide in PDF format, visit the OCR Web site at http://www.corprelations.wisc.edu. Faculty and staff members can also access the guide from the "Faculty Companies" section of WARF’s Web site at http://www.warf.org/forresearchers/index.jsp?catid=4 or by contacting their WARF licensing managers.