Name: Parungao Franxine Inigo S.

Section: BSIT 3B G2

Case Analysis 8: North Carolina State University

Company Background:

The essence of a university is more than education-—it is the advancement and dissemination of
knowledge in all its forms. For leading research institutions like North Carolina State University, part of
the university's mission is fulfilled by the Office of Technology Transfer (OTT). The function of the OTT
is that of a sophisticated matchmaker. Its small staff of highly trained licensing professionals-many of
whom have advanced degrees and are technology experts in their own right-seeks to find opportunities to
license and ultimately commercialize NC State's knowledge assets. These are usually promising new
technologies or inventions created at the university, covering every field of endeavor from materials to
biomedicine and more. “Our goal is to see actual consumer benefit come from the research conducted at
NC State," says Billy Houghteling, executive director of the OTT. The six licensing professionals in the
NC State OTT are very good at what they do. Today, over 100 products in the marketplace are based on
work done at NC State. Those successes represent the cream of the crop. Each year, more than 150 new
developments come in, to the OTT, to add to the university's store of approximately 3,000 technology
assets. Each is reviewed by one of the staff, and the most promising are pursued in depth. The professional
assigned to the offering works to become a subject matter expert on the technology, then starts looking for
companies that might be interested in licensing, developing and marketing it. "We need to find the optimal
partner for each case, "Houghteling says. "This can be difficult and challenging, because the market
opportunities for any given asset are not always clear. It's a complex triage process; we need to not only
understand the technology itself, but also its commercial potential. And then we need to find the partner
that can realize that potential effectively. It goes back to our purpose... it's not just to license, but to see
success in the marketplace." The process often takes from four to six months. Given the volume of new
technologies being submitted to the OTT and the size of the staff, it can be virtually impossible for the
office to keep pace. Added to this heavy workload is ongoing financial pressure brought about by a
difficult economic climate. As a state institution, the university is facing austere times and the extra
revenue brought in by technology licensing is of great benefit. One of the main issues faced by the OTT
licensing professionals is dealing with the vast number of data sources available to them. Online
databases, websites, publications and much more have to be searched to find that proverbial needle in a
haystack--the perfect development partner. "This can be a truly daunting challenge," says Houghteling.
"It's just not practical for us to search every possible source of information." For example, a great deal of
valuable information about the marketplace and potential development partners can be found in the myriad
reports and databases provided by the Securities and Exchange Commission. Unfortunately, the potential
return on the time it takes to find the right places to look is so low that it's not practical to dig very deep.
The result is that good opportunities may go by the wayside. Ironically, the OTT professionals are fully
capable and qualified to find them; they simply don't have the time or resources to uncover those potential
partners. "What we really need is analytics to help us, "Houghteling notes. "With the right tools, we can
make that part of the process a great deal more efficient, which translates directly to more opportunities to
see university research reach the marketplace." "We had a very clearly defined set of requirements,
"Houghteling states. "Speed, of course, since that was a key challenge. But equally important was utility;
speed is nothing if the answers are not useful to the licensing professional, so the output needed to be
easily consumed and relevant; free of clutter and unrelated leads. The system also had to be user-friendly,
to reduce workload. And of course, it had to produce better results than we could achieve on our own."

Questions

1.) Identify what the business objective is.

The Office of Technology Transfer (OTT) at North Carolina State University's main objective is to
expedite the process of finding and choosing possible partners who are inquiring about licensing and
selling off the intellectual property owned by the institution. The goal is to improve the effectiveness of
the process of technology transfer, encouraging more robust partnerships with other companies, and
ultimately yielding higher income for the university.

2.) Identify how predictive analytics was used to solve the business problem. Explain how the
predictive analytics solution works

The difficulty of quickly selecting appropriate development partners from a wide range of Predictive
analytics has been used to address the issue of available data sources. This remedy most likely entails
developing a model that can evaluate and rank possible partners based on a variety of criteria .such as how
the technology and the partner's experience match, or the partner's track record of success rates, current
market patterns, and other important factors. The goal of this approach is to simplify the evaluation
procedure, allowing the Office of Technology Transfer (OTT) to focus on the most important encouraging
prospects and find the best partners faster.

3.) How can analytics culture be built in the company?

Organize training courses and workshops to acquaint employees with analytics tools and techniques.
This guarantees that workers pick up the required abilities and comprehend the importance of statistics.
backing from the top

Make sure that the leadership actively supports the use of data. When executives highlight the
significance of data-driven decision-making; it cultivates an environment in which analytics is seen as an
essential an element of the business plan

Promote cooperation amongst people from various backgrounds, including business stakeholders and
analysts with experience. This strategy presents analytics as a tool that helps all members of the
organization,
assisting diverse roles in making well-informed decisions.
4.) Identify another possible predictive analytics solution similar to this that can be helpful in
another industry.

In fact, a comparable predictive analytics system might be used in the medical field to predict a patient's
reaction or result across different medical specialties or disciplines. Examining medical records, earlier
Predictive analytics using relevant variables and treatment outcomes could help the healthcare experts in
creating individualized treatment programs that are optimal for each patient. This strategy has the potential
to greatly improve patient outcomes, boost the effectiveness of delivery of healthcare, and maybe lower
expenses by avoiding pointless or inefficient treatments. In the end, applying predictive analytics to
healthcare has the potential to customize care. more accurately to meet the demands of every patient,
improving the standard and economy of medical services.