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Cornell's 9,000-foot hydroponic greenhouse on Route 13 in Dryden recently moved from research project to commercial venture when the university turned its lettuce-growing operation over to Challenge Industries of Ithaca. The facility allows lettuce to be grown year-round in tanks, using a computer-controlled lighting system developed by Louis Albright, Cornell professor of agricultural and biological engineering. Agway Corp. is marketing the system to other New York state growers.

"Build a better mousetrap, and the world will beat a path to your door."

Well, Ralph Waldo Emerson lived in simpler times.

Nowadays, you have to apply for a patent, which involves proving that your method wasn't previously used by, say, Tom, Sylvester or Wile E. Coyote. Then you must run some tests to show that your trap really catches more mice than others, get financing to build a factory, and, finally, launch an advertising campaign. Then, maybe, people will at least beat a path to Wal-Mart to buy your mousetraps.

Most people recognize that Cornell is a place where knowledge is created, but few understand how this knowledge is exploited. This new occasional column will describe how the ideas in the Cornell marketplace enter the marketplace of commerce.

First, a bit about the people who move those ideas out into the world: The Cornell Center for Technology, Enterprise and Commercialization (CCTEC) helps researchers to secure, develop and market their work by dealing with all the legal and financial complexities of the world outside academe. In 2004 CCTEC received 225 inventions from Cornell faculty and staff, filed 88 applications for U.S. patents and 40 overseas, licensed 87 patents for commercial use and helped to start five companies. At the end of the year, it held 594 U.S. and 238 overseas patents and was administering 497 active licenses. In the past five years, CCTEC and its predecessor, the Cornell Research Foundation (CRF), received 990 invention submissions from Cornell researchers, secured 912 U.S. patents, completed 373 license agreements and launched 36 start-ups. Between 1990 and 2004, net income from patent licensing was $26.2 million.

CRF was created in the 1930s to hold and manage patents that arose from Cornell's research advancement and discoveries. CCTEC (usually pronounced "C-tech") was created in May 2004 to combine CRF's functions with intellectual property management and economic development. The consolidation was one of the recommendations made by the university's Land Grant Mission Review Task Force in 2003 and was enthusiastically supported by Vice Provost for Research Robert Richardson. Richard Cahoon, who became acting president of CRF in 2002 after many years as its vice president, is now acting executive director of CCTEC, with a staff of 23. "There was a time when there were only three of us here," Cahoon recalls.

The inclusion of economic development in CCTEC raised a few eyebrows around campus, particularly among social scientists. While translating new scientific discoveries into saleable products and start-up companies might be one way to boost local, state and national economies, economic development also involves things like land use, tax policies, vocational education, even child-care facilities. But CCTEC has forged alliances with social scientists, particularly with the Community and Rural Development Institute (CaRDI). It has also reached out to Cornell Cooperative Extension offices throughout New York state to help create contacts with local governments and businesses.

When an invention is submitted to CCTEC, it is assigned to one of nine technology managers -- six in Ithaca and three in a satellite office at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York City. Each manager has a specialty. On the Cornell staff, for example, there are three life sciences managers: Corine Farewell deals with "everything with four legs or wings," while Alice Li takes "green things and molecules," and Jim Heitner handles plants and genomics. Scott Macfarlane handles most of the physical sciences, but "computer stuff" goes to Ernie Davis. John Brenner is the "in-between guy" for interdisciplinary ideas.

At Weill Cornell, Brian Kelly, Carol Dempster and Bruce Toman all handle medical and diagnostic innovations.

Technology managers prepare "tech briefs," which explain each invention in fairly simple language, and circulate them to contacts they have developed in business and industry. Patent applications are farmed out to several law firms, both local and national, based on their areas of expertise.

What happens next can vary widely. Some inventions are improvements to industrial processes or products -- notably pharmaceuticals -- that can be exploited by existing companies, and CCTEC may license its patents to the appropriate companies. The usual licensing arrangement involves an up-front payment followed by royalties on sales. University policy is to give a large percentage of the income to the inventor, with the remainder split between the inventor's research support, the inventor's academic unit and the university's general research support. A share goes to CCTEC to cover the expenses of managing the process.

Sometimes the result is not just money changing hands but a new relationship between a company and a researcher, with the company helping to support further research in return for an inside track on future developments and, often, the opportunity to hire students. "We recently licensed a biocontrol technology to a company, and they hired a number of students in the lab, and one of the key inventors became CEO," Cahoon notes.

"The chance of [a new technology] finding a home is not really high," he adds. "What's even lower is the chance that it is going to make a lot of money. What is likely is that we will find a company that sees the potential and wants to work with Cornell."

Other ideas lead to new products or services that can best be managed by creating start-up companies. That requires more than technology; it involves assembling teams with business savvy and securing venture capital.

In the past, start-ups have gone "where the money is," to places like Silicon Valley in California, Boston's Route 128 or even overseas. With increasing support from New York state, CCTEC is looking harder for opportunities closer to home.

Cahoon was recently approached by Jim Lattimore, the mayor of Auburn, N.Y., who said "We want to have the next Microsoft in Auburn." Well, maybe, Cahoon says. For now, CCTEC has launched a pilot project which will give it a presence in Auburn through the local Cornell Cooperative Extension office, while technology managers will work with local companies and entrepreneurs. A proposal is in the works to create a new CCTEC/CaRDI/CCE Economic Development University Center, funded by a Department of Commerce grant that would launch similar pilot projects in two other counties.

CCTEC also is working with local and regional sources of venture capital, including Tompkins County's Cayuga Venture Fund. One of the hardest things to find, Cahoon says, is development money: the funding to refine an idea into a practical product. "The feds don't do it; it's not research. Investors don't. We're working to set up a technology development fund. It's before venture capital; it's even before seed capital," he explains.

Meanwhile, CCTEC works with local and regional companies, including Borg-Warner, Ithaco and Sage Action, a small family-owned company, looking for places where new technologies might fit in, or places where Cornell faculty might contribute. CCTEC, he says, is not just about patents. "Patents are just a tool to help orchestrate the process," he explains. "What we're really about is creating opportunities for faculty."