Evaluation Tool for Technological Project Selection in the Early Stage of Innovation: Experiences from the Development of the Application in a Technology Transfer Office David Güemes-Castorena, Gonzalo Iván Uscanga-Castillo Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey (ITESM) Campus Monterrey, Nuevo León, México Abstract--A Technology transfer office needs to assess their technological project portfolio and are faced with the dilemma of selecting the most promising ones. Moreover, at the earliest stages of technology exist higher technical and market uncertainties as same as unsatisfactory evaluation tools to support the decision. Within this context, we already developed an evaluation tool that aims to assess the portfolio and supports the decision. However, there are some important questions related to the usability and the relevance and other benefits of the evaluation tool. This paper focuses on the experiences, the feedback from applicants/evaluators, and the lessons learned due to the application of the evaluation tool to a technology transfer office project portfolio in order identify the relevance of the evaluation tool as well as to improve the performance and its impact. This study comprises the problems associated with applying the tool, interpreting the results obtained, and foresees the future for the evaluation tool. I. INTRODUCTION Recognizing the importance of university related scientific and technology research as an important source of long-term economic growth and technological innovation, and faced with the pressure to speed up new product delivery, an ever decreasing product life cycle, and a fast technological obsolescence, U.S. corporations have significantly increased their sponsorship and financial support of academic research. As a consequence, university technology licensing has increasingly been looked at as a complementary and attractive solution to gain insights into new technology innovations [22]. So universities has to transfer technology to those who can potentially commercialize hence universities establish specialized intermediary structures. University Technology Transfer Offices (TTO’s) are typically the most important intermediaries in the commercialization of university research [3]. However, many of the studies on TTO’s discuss the methods or best practices in determining the potential commercialization success of a university invention a priori, and involve many methods and parameters needed to evaluate these technologies, but they rarely mention the process of valuation; in fact in a survey realized to 100 University Licensing Offices [11], only 14 responded that they use a methodology of a standard valuation process. Based on this context, Güemes et al [10] developed an evaluation tool that aims in the process of evaluation and supports the decision. Conscious that achieve the goal of building an effective and simple evaluation tool is an ambitious objective, we persist on the purpose to improve the evaluation tool, then this paper focuses on the experiences, the feedback from applicants/evaluators, and the lessons learned due to the application of the evaluation tool in order to improve it. II. LITERATURE REVIEW At different stages of the innovation funnel, the technology has different characteristics and needs and stages [7]; one of them, is the Early Stage Technologies (EST); however there are not clear definitions readily available. For example, Razgaitis [23] said that EST means potential new business opportunities that are at an early or mature state of R&D and not yet to the point of having been productized and introduced commercially. Otherwise, Dissel M. et al [7] define that an early stage technology can be determined by assessing the technical and market uncertainty of a specific technology; If these are high then the technology is in an early stage. In our case the most important characteristics in EST are: 1) the technology has not been commercialized and 2) more resources are needed to confirm its feasibility and have not passed the standards and regulations. This is the context of technologies analyzed through our evaluation tool therefore only some variables and tools are adequate. Thus, brief descriptions about TTO´s give us an understanding about who is the evaluation tool user. Later we provide a conceptual understanding of what a technology roadmap is and why this technique support our evaluation tool. Finally, the most representative evaluation tools found are described in order to integrate all those elements through our proposal and achieve the objective. A. University Technology Transfer Offices Technology transfer is a term used to describe a formal transfer of rights to use and commercialize new discoveries and innovations resulting from scientific research to another party. Universities typically transfer technology through protecting (using patents and copyrights), then licensing new innovations [2]. TTO’s personnel administer the commercialization process of a university’s intellectual property (IP), defined as patents, copyrights, trademarks, various know-hows, and related assets. At the most general level, TTO personnel are responsible to (a) evaluate and valuate disclosures of new discoveries; (b) seek legal protection for the technology, primarily through patenting; (c) sell licensing agreements to industry; and (d) collect royalty, oversee, and enforce contractual agreements with licensees [18]. Within this 2836 2014 Proceedings of PICMET '14: Infrastructure and Service Integration.