Reorganizing to create “one front door” for tech transfer at West Virginia University

A customer service mentality is critical to the success of university tech transfer, which has multiple stakeholders. Tech transfer offices need to take care of both inventors and their commercial partners, among others. This year, West Virginia University restructured its entire innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystem in the name of better serving its research and partner community.

Office centralization as a response to internal feedback and external shifts

WVU’s new Office of Innovation and Commercialization is a consolidation of several previous programs and offices. “The singular reason for this new approach,” says Executive Director Erienne Olesh, “was a direct response to feedback from the internal community. We had a lot of folks say, ‘I feel like I’m getting passed around between offices.’ or ‘I don’t know where the front door is.’”

Centralization would serve WVU’s external partners as well, who echoed the feedback of not knowing where to start when wanting to license a technology, sponsor research, or connect with a subject matter expert. Becoming a singular office also mirrored broader efforts on the university and state levels to coordinate West Virginia’s resources.

For the past couple of years, WVU has been going through a strategic transformation Erienne calls “an internal examination of alignment for future needs.” Like many universities, WVU’s future evolution is part of its day to day conversations across the board. “As a university, we were at the natural point in time where we look at how to restructure things for the future.” Looking to the state as a whole, “West Virginia is a small state with a smaller industrial sector than other states. As a state, we can’t afford to replicate resources,” Erienne explains. “So there’s been a considerable amount of work to create a statewide entrepreneurship ecosystem.” This broader reexamination created an opening for Erienne and Ryan to advocate for a rethinking of WVU’s approach to tech transfer.

Greater simplicity and better results while easing administration

Now, Erienne and Ryan’s office offers a single entry point for anyone — from undergraduates, graduates, or faculty to clinical faculty members — seeking any type of assistance, whether it’s pursuing intellectual property protection, connecting with corporate partners, forming a startup, or building up a use-inspired research program. WVU’s tech transfer restructure hasn’t just helped reduce confusion, it’s also led to better results. Says Executive Director of IP and Licensing Ryan Watson, “Being a one-stop shop has made us a more flexible partner to work with It streamlined the negotiation process so we can get to yes faster with our commercial partners.”

The problem of coordinating services across the whole system is one that most universities face. “We are a very big campus that touches many disciplines,” Erienne explains. “Engineering has different challenges and hurdles than Health Sciences has. So we had different colleges and departments put up their own version of commercialization support over the years to follow the trends in their space.” Ryan adds, “When there’s so much to cover and touch base on, putting it all under one umbrella just makes sense.”

The biggest challenge — and unlock — to transitioning to a single office at WVU

Fair resource allocation across colleges was one of the main challenges in creating a centralized office for the university. “Every college has their priorities and focus areas of excellence” says Erienne. To make sure there were no surprises after the transition, the new office focused on creating transparency upfront. “We had those hard conversations to set clear expectations ahead of time to our leadership: Here are the resources we have, here is our process for deciding how they’re allocated.”

Executive buy-in, specifically from WVU’s General Counsel, Chancellor of Health Sciences, and Vice President of Research, was another critical factor in unlocking a new model. “Once the leadership team was bought in and on the same page, they cleared a lot of hurdles — everything else fell into place.” Winning leadership support meant communicating the “why” behind the restructure and sharing real examples of how it would help. “You can’t take too long to get back to a potential licensee on red lines. You can’t have too much indecision internally on business terms. There may not always be an exact right decision, but making quick decisions ensures that deals are captured, not lost,” Ryan shares. “That’s key to building a reputation where you want to come back and work with us again.”

Advice to tech transfer offices when considering a reorg: do what’s right for your community

For other university tech transfer professionals considering changes to their operations, Erienne’s biggest piece of advice is: “Be very aware of what it is that your community actually wants. Lots of tech transfer functions are the same across universities, but there are a lot of ancillary things that have to wrap around these standard functions for the landscape to make sense for your university.” Some universities might be more interested in driving economic impact or building their entrepreneurship ecosystem. “Every university is going to be slightly different. Be very mindful of what your faculty, students, chairs, and deans find important before you start making any plans. We’ve seen it happen before, initiatives getting rolled out that actually weren’t appropriate for the university. WVU is never going to be Stanford. If we replicate them directly, chances are it’s not going to work out.”

For Ryan, tailoring plans to the university comes back to storytelling: “Stakeholders might come in and tell you about what they’ve heard other schools are doing without appreciating the resources necessary to support each initiative. Make sure to paint the picture about what you’re focused on. For us, it was that reputation of service.”

Focusing on customer service to do more with less

WVU’s story, though unique, is also representative of the “do more with less” mandate that’s being carried out across other universities, the state level, and at private companies. But Erienne and Ryan’s case illustrates that streamlining doesn’t have to mean slashing — taking a conscientious, tailored approach can create a system that’s more efficient and flexible in serving diverse needs.