Methods to Promote Creativity and Technological Transfer

Abstract

The different technological advances commented in previous chapters provide a broad range of tools for promoting the development process of novel biodevices, and multidisciplinary teams are sometimes needed to master and integrate all of them, so as to maximize their benefits for the development process.

Such technologies also promote very innovative approaches, although for such promotion it is essential to strengthen collaboration among the whole research team, as each expert controls a few technologies, and integrating the advances of all of them may be complex. Therefore, from the conceptual stage of a development project, it is necessary to adequately involve all researchers. The establishment of programmed control and working meetings is, thus, highly advisable for final project success.

Several tools for promoting creativity, also in programmed collaborative meetings, are indeed very useful for increasing, for promoting the involvement of the whole team in a new project, and, especially, for finding possible product concepts different to those from the concurrence and with remarkable features for improved diagnosis or therapy. In this chapter, we introduce several of these most adequate creativity promotion tools and present a case study comparing some of them.

Such creative differentiation from other already available (or under development) devices surely proves to be strategic, as intellectual property rights normally arise and patenting the device can protect our interests. Final approach to market may comprise serial manufacture of the device, normally in the case of projects funded by enterprises, or licensing agreements after prototype validation, normally in the case of projects tackled by academia, although some mixed solutions as funding a “spin-off” are also commonplace. We briefly discuss these different possibilities at the end of the chapter.