The Picatinny Technology Transfer Innovation Center: A business incubator concept adapted to federal laboratory technology transfer

In recent years, the US defense industrial base spawned the aerospace industry, among other successes, and served as the nation`s technology seed bed. However, as the defense industrial base shrinks and public and private resources become scarcer, the merging of the commercial and defense communities becomes necessary to maintain national technological competencies. Cooperative efforts such as technology transfer provide an attractive, cost-effective, well-leveraged alternative to independently funded research and development (R and D). The sharing of knowledge, resources, and innovation among defense contractors and other public sector firms, academia, and other organizations has become exceedingly attractive. Recent legislation involving technology transfer provides for the sharing of federal laboratory resources with the private sector. The Army Research, Development and Engineering Center (ARDEC), Picatinny Arsenal, NJ, a designer of weapons systems, is one of the nation`s major laboratories with this requirement. To achieve its important technology transfer mission, ARDEC reviewed its capabilities, resources, intellectual property, and products with commercial potential. The purpose of the review was to develop a viable plan for effecting a technology transfer cultural change within the ARDEC, Picatinny Arsenal and with the private sector. This report highlights the issues identified, discussed, and resolved prior to the transformation of a temporarily vacant federal building on the Picatinny installation into a business incubator. ARDEC`s discussions and rationale for the decisions and actions that led to the implementation of the Picatinny Technology Transfer Innovation Center are discussed