Tto Engagement Strategy

---
name: tto-engagement-strategy
description: "Use the Technology Transfer Office (TTO) effectively and recognise when outside support is needed alongside it."
---

# TTO Engagement Strategy

## Purpose

Use the Technology Transfer Office (TTO) effectively and recognise when
outside support is needed alongside it.

## Based on

the owner's published commercialisation guide (owner, 2025). Chapter "The Role
of TTOs" (pp. 26-29).

- Hewitt-Dundas et al. (2024) — active TTO support in business relationships
  reduces a spin-out's risk of failure
- Chen et al. (2024) — the best TTOs act almost as co-founders, through
  trust-based networks
- Kirihata research — building the TTO's trust and long-term relationships
  strongly affects the outcome

## Method

1. Involve the TTO early: invention disclosure review, IP protection,
   shaping the commercialisation strategy.
2. Find out what the TTO offers: funding connections (proof-of-concept funds,
   incubators), industry contacts, support for setting up the company, initial
   terms (equity split).
3. Assess the TTO's limits: does it have experience specifically in your
   industry (e.g. medtech regulation, software business models)? If not,
   seek complementary support.
4. Build a relationship of trust — the best TTOs help recruit an experienced
   CEO, bring in advisors, and navigate organisational bureaucracy.
5. If the TTO process feels slow: communicate openly and don't assume ill
   intent — many organisations are developing "founder-friendly" terms and
   fast tracks.
6. If an opt-out is available: weigh it carefully — those who bypass the TTO
   often end up needing support later anyway and may end up with worse deals
   on their own.
7. Complement the TTO proactively: mentors, incubator programmes, specialist
   consultants in areas where the TTO lacks deep expertise.

## Gotchas

- Step 3 (assess the TTO's limits, e.g. medtech regulation or software
  business-model experience) needs to be checked per industry via
  `industry-specific-commercialisation-playbook`, not assumed from general
  reputation — a TTO strong in biotech may have no relevant network for a
  software venture, and that gap only shows up if step 3 is actually done.
- Step 5 ("if the process feels slow, don't assume ill intent") can be
  misapplied to a genuinely under-resourced or out-of-depth TTO —
  communicating openly is the right first move, but this skill doesn't
  tell you when slowness is really a limits problem (step 3) that needs
  complementary outside support (step 7) rather than more patience.
- Step 6 warns that opting out of the TTO often means needing support
  later on worse terms, but weighing that trade-off requires reading your
  institution's actual IP policy and benchmarks, which this skill doesn't
  interpret for you (see `ip-disclosure-and-ownership-check`) — deciding to
  opt out from this skill's general caution alone is the same ungrounded
  move it warns against.
- This skill explicitly does not assess your own TTO's performance
  objectively (see "does NOT do") — concluding "our TTO is bad" from one
  slow interaction, instead of using the skill to structure what to ask
  and expect, overstates what the method supports.
- Step 2 surfaces the TTO's proposed equity split as one of the things it
  offers, but judging whether that split is reasonable isn't this skill's
  job — cross-check it against the benchmark ranges in
  `ip-disclosure-and-ownership-check` before treating an opening number as
  fixed.

## What this skill does NOT do

- Does not assess your own TTO's performance objectively — it helps structure
  what to ask and expect.
- Does not replace direct contact with the TTO.

## Continue from here

- Next in this pack:
  `../industry-specific-commercialisation-playbook/SKILL.md` — Tailor the
  commercialisation strategy and expectations by industry: life sciences,
  deep tech, software, societal/humanities-based innovations.
- Pack's shared guardrails: `../../CLAUDE.md`
- Overview of the full journey: `../commercialisation-journey-roadmap/SKILL.md`

## References

- `../../references/case-studies.md` — 7 spin-out examples from different
  industries and regions
- `../../references/terminology.md` — the handbook's glossary
- `../../references/sources.md` — the handbook's own source references
- `../../CLAUDE.md` — the pack's shared guardrails