Moving technologies from the test tube to commercial products

Abstract

Successful technologies include objects, processes, and procedures thatshare a common theme; they are being used to generate new products thatcreate economic growth. The foundation is the invention, but theinvention is a small part of the overall effort. The pathway to successis understanding the competition, proper planning, record keeping,integrating a supply chain, understanding actual costs, intellectualproperty (IP), benchmarking, and timing. Additionally, there areobstacles that include financing, what to make, buy, and sell, and thedivision of labor i.e. recognizing who is best at what task. Over thepast two decades, NASA Langley Research Center (LaRC) has developedseveral commercially available technologies. The approach to thecommercialization of three of these inventions; Langley ResearchCenter-Soluble Imide (LaRC-SI, Imitec Inc.), the Thin Layer UnimorphDriver (THUNDER, FACE International), and the Macrofiber Composite (MFC,Smart Material Corp.) will be described, as well as some of the lessonslearned from the process. What makes these three inventions interestingis that one was created in the laboratory; another was built using theprevious invention as part of its process, and the last one was createdby packaging commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) materials thereby creatinga new component.