---
title: "To Do: Support Experimental Approaches to Tech Transfer and Commercialization"
summary: |-
  Congress should fund a pilot program supporting experimental approaches to technology transfer and commercialization, and the administration should require labs to collect metrics, identify barriers, and hold labs accountable.
date: "2013-04-22"
issues: ["Technology Diffusion"]
content_type: "Knowledge Base Articles"
canonical_url: "https://itif.org/publications/2013/04/22/to-do-support-experimental-approaches-to-tech-transfer-and-commercialization/"
---

# To Do: Support Experimental Approaches to Tech Transfer and Commercialization

# Recommendation

Congress should fund a pilot program supporting experimental approaches to technology transfer and commercialization.

# Details

Federal laboratories play a key role in discovery and technology development. But they can do more. The next administration should require the collection of more comprehensive commercialization metrics from labs. It should identify barriers to commercialization and seek to reduce them either through administrative action or legislation. And to the extent it can, it should hold labs more accountable for commercialization, including by providing bonuses for the top-performing labs.

**Keep reading:**

- Stephen Ezell and Robert D. Atkinson, “25 Recommendations for the 2013 America COMPETES Act Reauthorization” (ITIF, April 2013), [https://itif.org/publications/2013/04/22/25-recommendations-2013-america-competes-act-reauthorization](https://itif.org/publications/2013/04/22/25-recommendations-2013-america-competes-act-reauthorization).

---
*Source: Information Technology & Innovation Foundation (ITIF)*
*URL: https://itif.org/publications/2013/04/22/to-do-support-experimental-approaches-to-tech-transfer-and-commercialization/*