Value-added technology transfer: a pioneering NOAA system linking marine technologies with entrepreneurs

The NOAA Center for Technological Innovation (CTI) at the Coastal Services Center, Charleston, South Carolina, is a pilot coastal environmental technology system that links technology with entrepreneurs and provides access to resources to nurture new businesses. The CTI is a highly leveraged, catalytic and entrepreneurial organization that is pioneering innovative mechanisms that link government, academia, and business networks with entrepreneurs, technology, capital, and markets necessary for successful value added technology transfer to ensure that good ideas for technological environmental solutions reach the market. The CTI will augment existing means of Federal laboratory technology transfer that emphasize joint laboratory usage, missions directly applicable to the commercial market, spin-offs, licenses, and knowledge transfer. The CTI is particularly structured (1) to overcome the "technology transfer gap" which acts as a barrier to the commercialization of path-breaking, infrastructural, cutting edge technologies, paving the way for the introduction of American products and services abroad.