OTT Internship Program 2.0 – Revamped, Refreshed & Reinvigorated!

With any program, no matter how successful, there is always room for improvement. Several months ago we decided to take a close look at our already successful internship program for ways in which it could be improved. We knew we could build upon earlier success, learn from other universities and create something that is unique to Emory OTT.

We began with our end goal in mind – through a robust training program, prepare fully capable interns who would require little day-to-day instruction and be capable of creating our foundational documents – the Commercial Evaluation Report and Technology Brief on Day 1. We felt this goal met both desired outcomes from a successful internship program: 1. Provide valuable real-world training for our interns and 2. Receive valuable work product that benefits the Office in a meaningful way.

So we broke down our program into parts and laid it bare on the table for inspection – we decided what we loved more and what we loved less, what was working well, and what was not. Then we picked up the phone and called some friends from other TTOs to see how they did things.[i] We took all these pieces and analyzed them as to how they fit into a program that fulfils the goal. Some things were a good fit, others were not; still others were altered to fit into our vision of a successful internship program for Emory OTT. This design period created the foundation ingredients for how our revamped program would take shape.

The biggest change for the Internship Program 2.0, was the addition of a more formal training program upfront. The result is a new 5-week program consisting of one 4-hour day per week with the 5^th week as a “capstone project.” The first four weeks we walked through the key concepts of technology transfer, the core aspects of our Commercial Evaluation Report and real case studies. The capstone project for each intern is an oral presentation of a Commercial Evaluation Report they completed on their own without any input from the licensing team, this serves as a competency check.

A key component that we kept from version 1.0 of our program is the rotation portion where the interns apply their newly minted skill set in 2-month rotations with various technology managers. These partnerships help the technology manager generate more work and also expose the intern to varied learning opportunities, technology management strategies, and approaches while working hand-in-hand with one of our licensing professionals. We ask for three 2-month rotations from our interns and offer up a fourth, if it’s a good fit, with a more advanced rotation such as a patent attorney, our Director of Startups, or our Marketing Manager.

After finishing our first cohort’s training and first rotation under Internship 2.0, we are happy to say it is proving to be smashing success! Our interns are part of our team and they make valuable contributions to our internal analytical process and are learning skill sets that will set them apart from competing job applicants as they move out of academic research. Our previous alumnae from our program successfully found jobs in consulting, patent law, academic licensing and corporate business development and we are confident that graduates of our OTT Internship Program 2.0 will see similar results!