Gus Orphanides
Director of Licensing, Air Products & Chemicals, Allentown, PA, USA

Casey Porto
Director, Technology Transfer, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, TN, USA

Dan Gleitman
Director, Technology Ventures, Halliburton Energy Services Group, Houston, TX, USA

Norma Formanek
VP and General Counsel, Electric Power Research Institute, Palo Alto, CA, USA

Tom Williams
Deputy Director, National Renewal Energy Laboratory, Golden, CO, USA

For intellectual property and technologies to lead to commercial products injections of technical and commercial ideas, development resources, investment capital and business discipline are needed at determinant points along the way. This holds true if the inventing organization is a public sector laboratory chartered to develop technology for someone else to commercialize for the public good, or is a private sector for-profit company capable of commercializing itself, if it chooses to do so. The path from invention to product has twists, turns, surprises and delays even when one organization keeps control and ownership from beginning to end. When the inventing organization will not be the one to complete the technology development, but instead intends to license and transfer it to an acquiring party as To-Be-Developed Technology for that party to complete and commercialize, then a process discontinuity arises that adds delays and costs to both licensor and licensee unless both parties address the stumbling issues that stand in the way of a better and faster outcome.