How the Technology Transfer Handbook Was Built in Five Days with James Filpi, Joy Goswami, Michael Samardzija, and Alysa Khouri

[Music] You're listening to "Autumn on the Air," the weekly podcast that brings you conversations about the impact of research, commercialization, and the people who make it happen. Join us for interviews with patent and licensing professionals, innovators, entrepreneurs, and tech transfer leaders on the issues and trends that matter most. We're listening for an inside track on the people, IP policies, and politics changing our world. [Music] Welcome to "Autumn on the Air." Today we're discussing one of the most comprehensive and innovative resources in the technology transfer field. The technology transfer handbook, a policy primer for the commercialization of intellectual property and invention. This handbook represents a remarkable achievement, a complete policy and practice guide developed in just five days through an innovative collaborative process called book sprints. What makes this process extraordinary is not just its speed, but the diversity of expertise brought together to create it. Today I'm delighted to welcome four individuals involved in the creation of this handbook. James Philippi, JD, commercial law development program, US Department of Commerce, who envisioned this project and championed its creation at CLDP, an organization dedicated to strengthening legal and regulatory frameworks that support commerce globally. Joy Guzami, MBA, Director of Licensing and Commercialization Initiatives at the Research Foundation for the State University of New York, and a member of Autumn's leadership, bringing deep expertise from his work with one of the nation's largest research funding organizations and the technology transfer community. Michael Samarjia, PhD, JD, a partner at Wambl-Bahn Dickinson, LLP, and a leading intellectual property attorney bringing specialized legal and IP experience to the team. Alyssa Kure, the facilitator of book sprints, guided this remarkable collaborative process. Alyssa brings unique expertise and facilitation and how to unlock the creative potential of diverse experts working under these intense time constraints. Additionally, I want to recognize the contributions of all the multi-stakeholder group members who participated in this five-day book sprints. Edward Blocker, intellectual property owners association, David Gazarian, and Naira Campbell, Kure Guren, from American University of Armenia, Priya Prasad, CLDP, US Department of Commerce, Richard Cahoon, Cornell University, as well as myself, Lisa Mueller, your host, from Caj mayor Jones. This handbook was developed at Caboose Farm near Camp David, Maryland in August 2025, where the group was sequestered for five intensive days. Let's dive into this fascinating conversation. Welcome to the podcast, James, Joy, Michael, and Alyssa. Thank you for having us. Thank you. Good to be here. Thanks, Lisa for having us. Well, I'm really excited to see all of you again, as we'll talk about in detail during the podcast, but let's go ahead and get started and talk about the genesis of this book. And James, that leads me to begin with you. Talk to us a little bit about your vision to create this handbook. What inspired you to pursue a comprehensive tech transfer handbook? What problem or maybe gaps in the field? Did you see that thought required this particular document? So my office, the US Department of Commerce, commercial law development program, which I'll refer to as CLDP, we decided to write this book to provide for policy makers and technology transfer managers in emerging markets, a framework for how to develop a technology transfer ecosystem. There are innovative opportunities all over the world, including in emerging markets. And there are new technologies from these opportunities all over the world. And CLDP has been working on tech transfer to provide opportunities for the US and emerging markets to partner in these new technologies. The gaps that we're trying to fill are one, the lack of connectivity. There are many stakeholders in emerging markets. And they don't necessarily know who should be talking to whom else in order to protect and then commercialize new technologies. We're trying to give them an easy reference guide to the second gap, which is best practices. My office wanted to show emerging markets how to develop an ecosystem so they can start contracting with US companies to get their innovations to market. So that's why we wrote it and for the lack of connectivity as well as providing a reference for best practices was why we decided to write the book. Now, listen, I want to turn to you because James chose the book sprints methodology to tackle writing this handbook. Now, I know I was not familiar with book sprints and I think either were Michael and Joy when they were first approached. So talk to us about exactly what book sprints is, where it originated from and walk us through how it's different than traditional handbook development and why five days and what those five days are like. Super question, things either the book sprints either as a collaborative process where experts come together typically in a room sometimes also online. And as you said, for five days and within these five days they collaboratively write a book. The process was developed over 15 years ago from Adam Hyde, who's a tech guru to develop this process together with NGOs and also tech companies. So it has been tried and tested over years. We've created over a hundred different books with the help of this methodology. It is a process that is guided by a facilitator so there will always be a facilitator in the room with the experts, but then they will also be supported by a back end book sprints team that is comprised of copy editor's illustrators and also book designers that really help to kind of get this process going and get a book that's publishable within five days. So now you're asking why five days it is really the method itself. We have three different kind of stages that we go through within these five days. And those five days are so important for us that we really cannot do it. We always say we cannot do it in two days, for example. Truly something that has happened on five days and also not in six. We say that these three stages are the structuring, the writing and also the editing stage. So all of the authors at experts, we call them authors of writers, go through these three stages and it's important that we will start with the structuring. So typically in any handful of writing, you will always start with the questions, why are we doing this? Who are we writing this for? What is important to mention? What are we actually taking out of the structure and so all of these questions are collaborative. We talked about in the group of Henry and then typically is the first day and then we'll move on to the writing process after we kind of set the common ground and all of the objectures are clear to each other. We will start the writing process slowly. We will have another kind of quick check up with everyone to see if everyone agrees on the structure still or if there's things that we need to change up. And then the heavy load of writing begins, which typically takes one to one and a half days. It's not that much in comparison. And what really takes up a lot of work is the editing process because it is a process of shared authorship, which means that you as an expert would not only write content. You will also go into other people's text and start editing adding onto it, maybe taking something out that is maybe less important in regards to the target audience and so on so far. So a lot of the times that you and throughout the five days is actually an editing mode and you will be guided by the facilitator to do that work correctly. And also with a lot of trust amongst your colleagues that you will add onto the content in a way that is valuable for everyone. So I want to add that as an international commercial lawyer that works on global policy issues, it's difficult to get the right people from different parts of the world together. long enough to organize, discuss, draft, edit, a handbook in international commercial law and business. Getting everyone together with no distractions, as well as a constant working process, has been very valuable for my office, the Commercial Law Development Program. CLDP has written several books through book sprints and we found them to be very valuable tools for business people and their lawyers in working out some of these issues in order to improve how they do business across borders. Now, you were the facilitator for this particular book's friend and you mentioned the backend team also supporting you copy editors and you also had people who could do images and they were really valuable during this process too. One of the things I thought was particularly interesting was they were in different time zones. So our group would finish our work product for the day and then that would go off to your team and then we would have feedback in the morning. Talk a little bit about that advantages of that type of system. Yeah, it's truly a very supportive group of people that we work with. So wherever we are in the world, I don't only do book sprints in the US but also in Europe or even in Africa, they will always work at night times. Even if we share the same time zone, they will still work at night time for us and it's truly valuable because we will first of all get feedback especially from the copy editors on where the text that's currently. So the copy editors will spread out the night, will read through the whole book whether that's 50 pages or 250 pages and give us feedback on where each of the chapter stands. We need to bring in more depth or if it's actually too detailed already and we maybe need to consider separating chapters too. Also more substantial matters and if there's an incoherence between chapters. So that is truly great because that is something that we can work with as a group on the next day and ten of hash things out there. And then of course, and then looking at Michael because I think there was a love relationship with our illustrator, Leonard, because yes, we have an illustrator who is also, he either works at night time or he also sometimes works with us during the day to kind of get all illustrations going that we want can think of. So usually we'll sketch it out in the room. We'll take a picture of it and send it to him and then by five minutes later we'll have a ready-made image in the design of the client. So in this case CLDP have its own design for this kind of series that we're building and it's all there and ready to use within a couple of minutes. So listen, what makes book sprints work? You had people from all around the world who are part of this group, very multi, it was a multi stakeholder group and everybody had different interests. So how do you get everybody to work together and come up and be unifying to come up with one single product? Usually the first day really does the trick because on the first day we talk not only about structure but also the objective of the book. Everyone will come with different kind of intrinsic motivation to the process but usually a lot of times we want to make an impact with books or with the product and we really want to make people understand something better. We want people to make use of the knowledge that we have in the room and that creates a common understanding and a common objective. And that's the first one but then also in terms of multi stakeholder interests, how do we manage, cheating interests, how do we manage people maybe wanting exactly the opposite. I think that's something that happens naturally in facilitation where whenever I see that they might be conflict or that people might not agree as much with each other, I'll just grade that as a topic and I say I'm noticing tension here. Why don't we have a look at that and why don't we discuss it further because a lot of times it's not actually tension that's just two different experiences or two different viewpoints that have a lot of the same information and we just need to find the in the teens of that to make people understand where we're wanting to go. And a lot of times also with inbox friends, there is a way of adding different layers. So even if there's competing interests, we can actually incorporate that into a book and differentiate even more for the target reader to understand what the topic can all be about. Usually we talk about very complex topics so it's not very easy to be very linear. It's actually a gift that there is so many different interests in a room because that only adds more layers and more details to the book. So Michael and Joy, I want to ask you, I mean, you were part of this group and talk a little bit about how those days were like and Alyssa's facilitation of our group and all that we went through and how she navigated this process. Michael, why don't you start first? I think at the beginning it was a bit daunting, at least for me. I've only known two individuals in that group. I didn't know anyone else. And I knew there was a task of writing a document at the conclusion of the five days. And I really didn't understand how on earth would we be able to get that done in particular after spending the first few minutes in hearing the diverse viewpoints within the room. But then after a while when we established sort of a rough outline of chapters and divided into groups, it became certainly manageable. But it was hard work. It was from morning till night with breaks from meals but you're spending it all together. So even during the meals you're basically talking about this. So it was a lot of hard work but it was worth it, I think, at the end. Joy, how about for you? Yeah, first of all, thanks so much for inviting me to this podcast. It's a fascinating idea to discuss about this very, very unique methodology that we adopted to write a book on nothing other than Tec transfer, which hardly many people really understand from the get goes to what it is. So when Michael mentioned that it was daunting, I would tend to say that it was way more than daunting to me when I got the invite to do this. And as it started getting more and more apparent that this is going to be a five day endeavor that it's going to be something that we'll have to indulge with a bunch of people that we really don't know. And with a structured methodology where a book's print is going to eventually help us navigate to the process in a subject area that is so diverse for many people. It was definitely more than daunting at the end of the day. But of course, everything revealed itself as we started, we started off the five day campaign or an excursion, so to speak, with sitting in under closed doors with members whom we didn't know anything about. But all talking the common thread of what we technically term as Tec transfer. And each one of us has a different philosophy, a different methodology, worked with different backgrounds, came either from the corporate or the academic sector or we're working in a legal firm. So with all the diversity that started off on day one, I think Alisa was fantastic in trying and sort of putting her role as directing this show in a way that eventually drove us to getting some kind of a polarization of thought, so to speak. So what started off as a complete Brownian movement for those who would understand chemistry ended up becoming a very nice solidified effort to put together the book in the format in which it came out in the five days that we were doing it together. Very intense, very apprehensive on day one. But at the end of the day, I think what came out was a fantastic book and I'm sure many of our readers will appreciate when they eventually get to read the book that the content of the book was so well captured with everyone's feedback. Again, to begin with, no one knew each other, but eventually they all tied and put their efforts together in a very coherent manner. And I think what came out was a phenomenal product at the end of the day. So hats off to CLDP and hats off to book sprint, Alissa and specific to eventually put this all together and then make this into an endeavor that was something that I will always cherish and obviously remember the rest of my life. Needless to say, all those members that were participating in this endeavor We're all strangers to begin with, but almost became friends for life at the end of the day. So a great, great experience to speak the least. Yeah, absolutely great experience. And I think one of the keys to the experience as well was where we were conducting this book sprint. We were out at Caboose Farm near Camp David. And that was obviously James and Alyssa, a very deliberate choice. Talk to us why it was important to get us away from, for example, downtown DC or major metropolitan city. And Alyssa, for you, that was really critical because you got us away from our normal environments, the pressures and beeps and buzzes of our everyday life and got us settled into kind of a routine and got us situated in this intensive environment. So I'm curious to the two of you, the role that the environment played in this process as well. And maybe James, talk to us why you selected Caboose Farms of All Places. Well, ironically, Caboose Farms is just south of Camp David. So you got that feel of international policy being made. But the sequestration was critical. As I mentioned before, it's difficult to get all these people in one place when you do what I do. And most international lawyers, most international business people, they have short periods of time to talk if you're not sequestered. And any number of cancellations can come up when you have, you know, 10 people with expertise that you're trying to get together. So we're serving the time at a place that is historic and has no distractions, was extremely important. And like I mentioned that it's also very doable if you follow the book's strengths, rules and process. You can write a book in five days, but you definitely need to sequester people and getting an environment that helps you think forward to what can this product do? I think is the reason why we wanted to be at Caboose Farms. And I just want to emphasize here that, you know, distraction is something that really intervenes in most of our data activities as we all know. And we're kind of getting used to it with technology lying all around with cell phones and laptops buzzing with all kinds of alerts and attention seekers that want to eventually drag ourselves away from what we are doing on a day to day basis. This was a perfect example of what happens and what life was, let's say, I would tend to say a hundred years ago when there was no technology and everything was confined to where it was. So we went little retrogressive. I think we were concentrating on what we were doing, we were jelling. And it was, again, an experience that I just can't even describe because I don't think I'll ever, unless I'm asked to write another book and then I wish I am to do this again with this, the entity. I don't think I'll be ever able to explain and replicate this kind of an experience which was phenomenal at least to me. You saying that it was, it felt like a hundred years ago, it just made me think that we actually had a fire pit as well. So we actually even had activities around in nature and we did walks around in nature, which just naturally helps with kind of setting in with the very high pressure that of course is underlying in the book's print. It kind of needs to be very productive in five days and I think the nature really does help and little activities like fire pits and things and other activities like music, they really helped us to get along and make friends for life, I guess. Sure. And the only thing, of course, I compliment you was that you were getting us food and we didn't have to be hunters and gatherers. But other than that, I think I would tend to say that this was a fantastic endeavor for us to eventually be at a place without any distractions. I did not even have any cell phone signals for five days. So I helped. I had to go back to my room to get internet to eventually tell my wife that I'm alive. But a great example of what you can achieve in such a short time if there isn't much distraction. Michael, maybe you enjoy sharing a little bit about how our day to day rhythm was as people who are working on these chapters during that five days. I would wake up, get ready, leave the cabin in which I was staying and I would walk down this road that on a very busy day, there are three cars that would pass by. Then we would meet in the area that we were gathering, we would have breakfast, then we'd go down and meet together and do the tasks that Lisa would assign us on that day or that morning. We usually would have a mid-morning break, then we'd have lunch, we'd keep going through dinner and even we would have some activities after dinner every once in a while. But if we weren't writing, at the beginning we would be responsible for writing a specific chapter to or three of us. And then after the chapters were written, we were all responsible for revising or editing or adding to, as Lisa said, the other chapters. And as Lisa said, I was really enamored with the talents of Leonard because I would give him my idea of what figure would go well and he'd come up with these amazing, amazing figures. I was just mesmerized by his talents. So that's sort of what we did. No, totally. I think Michael is absolutely right. Like I mentioned, we were totally free from any distraction. And what started off as Lisa mentioned is a very broad project to begin with on day one where we weren't sure. And of course, we were asked not to get anything with us. In other words, no prep needed for any of the authors to get in while this project began. So we all had very open mind of what we were getting into. But day one was all about throwing out ideas and making it seem as though we wanted to all sort of get into some level of coherence in thinking of what the book is going to look like. So what really started off as a very random sort of ideas among all the authors about why we want to go started to look much more solidified and concrete as we move forward. And again, I compliment booksprint for doing it the way they really had nifty mechanisms by which they were throwing out questions. And each author were sort of throwing out their ideas, some of them very early wild. And then we were putting it on on stickies and putting it on glass windows. And then there was a screening mechanisms to eventually identify the ones that we wanted to retain versus the ones we wanted to eventually abandon. And then we came with a nice structure at the end of the day, aside from, of course, the title of the book and then the contents of it to eventually get to some place where we thought it would be a nice place for us to start writing on the content. So like Alissa mentioned, I think we started this project as broadly as we could by structuring it moving into the writing component, which, you know, believe it or not was relatively less intense as compared to structuring it. And then finally, of course, the more important thing where we indulged into editing the book, which took a chunk of our time. And while editing it, each of the authors got to see what the others were doing, something, as like I mentioned, beginning with a Brownian movement and us polarizing and getting into a solidified ground with the book that's coming along. And I hope it's a good book for everyone to read was a phenomenal experience. So yeah, I agree. It was a great, great experience. I lived in a little cabin like everyone else, literally walking distance from where we were sitting in, indulging in the writing part. And so it was a nice stroll to the place early in the morning. And we walked back pretty late in the evening. All of us still continuing to think as to what we was coming the next day. So a very, very interesting time and project in general. And I think the last day and a half, I guess Lisa, Joy and I drew the short end of the stick because we were assigned to revise the entire document to ensure that it has one voice going through I think that to me was the highlight of the event because that was the best collaborative work I have ever had the chance to be a part in my life. I think the three of us were able to kind of have a mind meld and be able to kind of go through it really, really well, really in a respectful manner to each other and to the authors that provided the work. I really enjoyed that part a lot. I just want to quickly mention here on Michael's comment that the general saying goes too many cooks, boiled the broth. So when you're having so many authors write a book, you tend to think that this book is going to be a total mess because everybody will have a different idea and things wouldn't solidify well enough. But this was quite the contrary in that everybody contributed and everybody eventually was a contributor to each of these chapters. And this is not an edited book, my name means where the book is made with contributions from an author for a particular chapter. But this was a contribution coming with all authors contributing to every single chapter which was I think a very unique product in and of itself. Yeah, you definitely don't see that where you have multiple authors contributing and revising chapters like that. But I agree with you Michael that editing that the three of us did was one of my highlights from my five days there because it really was incredible how the three of us worked. And it seemed seamlessly to get through all that content and come up with one kind of unified voice. It really was a delight and something that I will definitely never forget. And Michael sticking with you for a second, you know, digging into the handbook in a little bit more detail, you know, it has eight core chapters from IP fundamentals through emerging trends like AI and open innovation. How we approached organizing the incredible landscape of tech transfer and what we did in terms of using some practical templates as well as case studies and why those are also really important part of this handbook. I think as Alisa and Joy already said, I think on the first day we wrote down ideas on stickies notes and then posted them on this beautiful window that obscured a view, but that's alright. We did it for purpose and then we started organizing things and we wanted to tell a story. We wanted to explain why tech transfer is so vital to any country's system and why innovations really need what ecosystem they need to strive and how to go about developing these wonderful innovations that come out of these research and academic institutions. And then to go through the whole process with all the funders that you need the venture capitalist, the developers, the those that are responsible in incubating these startup companies and then providing tools for countries that perhaps don't have a tech transfer systems so that they can implement them. And use them not necessarily use them as a whole, but they can make it really fit for their own purposes and that was the whole plan as I understood it right James right. Now Joy the handbook serves multiple audiences government officials researchers tech transfer professionals entrepreneurs and investors. How do you think the handbook serves each of these groups and how do you think different readers will go about using it. Lisa good question again this is I think an attribute that we had that we that all the authors really question right from the get go is to what the target audience is and usually some of these handbooks are sort of directed to a specific sector so it will be only academic sector or the corporate sector or the business sector. But we knew for a fact that we want to make it broad enough to eventually have anyone who wants to learn about technology transfer to get a sense of what it is also we do not want to make this very technical so we wanted to dumb it down for anybody who may not even have an idea of what technology transfer really is to be reading this book and getting a sense of how important this so called best kept secret about this profession is all about so it was a bit of a challenge and but we have always kept that in mind because that was a discussion we had on day one that we'll have multiple authors and and we're going to eventually carve it out in a format that will eventually serve the purpose of members reading from any of these sectors to somebody who has no idea what the transfer is so my recommendation is of course is to download the book take a look at it. It has a very intuitive chapter break it and each of these chapters has subtopics that one can delve into to get to understand what it is so somebody who really wants to know comprehensively about the transfer and what it is can read it like a novel from from page one to the last page or if somebody is interested to take on specific areas they are welcome to jump to the specific chapter and their chapters are on startups the chapters around you know obviously infrastructure of an ecosystem so mostly covering you know ecosystems of some of these areas where the transfer happens and is bolstered obviously it revolves around the transfer offices and again that's confining from small medium to large for academic transfer so it's very intuitive and if you really look at the contents of the book. It should be easy for somebody to navigate and read as they want to go through this book and figure out what they want to do also I do want to emphasize here that there this is also covering a lot of international authors so it's not just confined to North America or US because many of the authors were from international countries so we have extremely good coverage of instances and examples coming from the other countries as well and some glorification of this book is with specific examples that we have blocked out that somebody can read if they want to just flip through the pages to get you know specifics of something that happens in a particular case case study for that particular chapter so I think it's it's a nice way that the book is sort of framed and I think it's going to be fairly easy to read it. I think it's going to be fairly intuitive for somebody to read it regardless of its segment or sector they come from and I think another really great thing about this book and this goes to you James is you issued it under a creative common license so it can be freely shared translated and adapted. Why did you choose this generous approach and how do you envision the handbook to be used globally particularly in emerging economies. Right so CLDP is a public service so we want as many people to be able to benefit from our work and such as this handbook as possible it's really a credit to the authors who are willing to share their knowledge for the cause of expanding technology transfer all over the world. Again it is a training tool and a reference guide and we've begun introducing the book in Central Asia Eastern Europe and the Middle East so far and as a training tool again it'll bring together stakeholders in these emerging markets and encourage them to follow best practices. It will also be a reference point by which government to government or government to private sector training and consultations can can continue. We will use the book to guide these emerging markets and some of the decision maker the policy and guide to the decisions that these emerging markets have to make so that they can develop as effective a technology transfer process as possible. As I mentioned we've started in a few jurisdictions but there is a lot of potential for the book going forward particularly in jurisdictions that have a lot of opportunity for us companies to work on new technologies such as in Latin America. I think another really interesting and unique feature about the book is that it doesn't wrap up. represent the policy positions of any one single organization. It synthesizes best practices and options. So I think that clarity was really, really important. I want to ask the group, how did that help navigate potential conflicts amongst all the stakeholders who participated in writing this handbook? And maybe James, I'll start with you first. Well, the handbook represents best practices. And I do think that there's a lot of consensus among technology transfer experts, particularly in North America about the lessons that we've learned. In the places where there's more discretion, where the emerging markets have to make a decision, they have the references there to decide for themselves. And the emerging markets need to make their own policy decisions based on what is best for them. And the book gives them a group of very credible experts so that they can make the decisions that they need to make. Joy, given your position within autumn, what are your thoughts regarding some of these unique features and the synthesis of best practices in the handbook? Yeah, I think this is something that is nifty about this book itself, that it is not confined to a specific area from jurisdiction standpoint. So I go around and teach tech transfer around the world. And each country I go to, I notice that the transfer is done differently. For obvious reasons, the cultural differences, their differences in policy, their just differences in which where the incentivization from top down isn't as much. So again, we have tried to normalize those situations and not hone towards any specific country. In other words, we are not trying to coach from the book that Bidol is the best way to eventually do tech transfer for countries that do not have Bidol or something like that. So all these controversial topics are not accounted for. But having said that, we have also made instances as to what best practices have been followed by specific countries for the betterment of the job of doing tech transfer. So again, this is a very broad-based book, which is what makes this book very unique. And I think it's going to be ubiquitously used for that reason. As you know, many tech transfer manuals and books that you'd get are very specific to a specific topic or they are sort of confined to certain Godrails that do not make it globally acceptable. I have a feeling again as this book is circulated and we get readership that this will be beyond boundaries. And as it's going to eventually target audiences that will be global and agnostic to a specific culture or a practice to a particular country. So Alyssa, you've facilitated dozens of books, sprints across multiple different industries and fields. Talk to us what made this tech transfer handbook project distinctive to you. I think that's linked with what Joy said before. First of all, the motivation to write a book that is applicable in a lot of different countries and a lot of different scenarios, whether that's in the university or also the third ecosystem was very high. And there's things that came from experience that each and every expert in the room had tech transfer going greatly and being a great success but also tech transfers failing and maybe not reaching the success they wanted to. And so there was a lot of intrinsic motivation of making this book a really good baseline and something that a lot of people broadly can use and will understand and not only the lawyers, the room will understand. But really everyone in this especially good tech transfer offices will be able to use as a resource and guideline. And so I think that was very particular in this group that right in the start the dynamic was okay. Let's do this. Let's make a really good example and a really good book. Not that the other books and books prints don't have a motivation, but I feel like in this case, you know, the special emotions were at the base. And then I also, what I do remember about this process is that there was a lot of commentary amongst all participants. We were all kind of supportive. I was walking around a lot, understanding where each group stands, and kind of midday or after dinner. So I was always trying to understand what was happening. And I was also sending people to each other and smaller groups to make sure that there's coherence. And never was there any bigger conflict happening. There was a lot of understanding for each other. And also I think the common goal was very clear. And so we were able to drive a very coherent product towards the end. So was there anything about our group that really surprised you and you have to be honest? Michael. Michael Samarazzi now. No, I really actually do have to say that there's always a critical choice in a bookstrip method. We always have a group that reached through the whole book. And it's the choice that I have to make. Who do I put in this group? And I was on back and forth, whether I put you free, Joy, Michael and Lisa into that group or not, whether I add a navel person or not, but in the net, decided to have the go with you free. And he was sitting in the cinema room from day in, I think we met at seven in the morning until nine at night. And you were so hardworking and dedicated. But also every time I came into the room, I think someone was laughing. And you were having actually a good time. That's something that I will always remember and that surprised me that even tasks or that have a lot of pressure, you could still actually enjoy the moment and go through it with, as Michael said, a fine debil. And really just get a great truck out of that. You know, we've been talking that this is obviously five days of very intensive collaborative work. And now we've got this great handbook that's going to be used globally. I want to ask each of you, since I asked, Lisa, what surprised her about our group, the three of you, what surprised you about this process? And James, I'm going to start with you first. For me, you know, my office has a, there's a lot of praise and discussion of book sprints. Mostly our energy and critical minerals teams had written books through books, prints. So working on tech transfer, I had never gone through the book assurance process before. I've never drafted, I've never authored a book collaboratively or on my own before. And I was surprised how doable it was. I mean, like everyone else, I was skeptical and shocked on the first day. Even though I, lots of colleagues said it's going to be great, you know, work the hardest you ever have, et cetera, et cetera. I was still worried. I think day two or three, I was still worried. But, you know, I would like listeners to know that this is a doable process. If you follow the book's prints method, you can write a valuable book, a very good book in five days. Do I have on you? What surprised you the most? To me, to honestly, other than the fact that, obviously, like I mentioned in the five days that we were together, day one, it just didn't look like we were going to get to any place in five days. So the fact that we even had the book made to the perfection that we eventually got it to was super surprising to me. And more importantly, if I were asked to do it myself, just as an individual author, you know, probably I could sit down and do it because I know I'm in control of myself. But having people with such diversity and in a feel like tech transfer, which is, as you all know, as undefined as you can think, coming from different sect, people, members coming from different sectors, from different countries, I think the fact that we could eventually put this compendium and this fantastic book together in the five days really, really surprised me overall. I do want to again emphasize the fact that the fact that CLDP took upon the fact that they want to write a book on tech transfer in and off itself was surprising because, you know, as you know, many people don't quite understand and appreciate what technology transfer is. And, you know, while it was quite an experience for me myself, I think it was a great learning for me to listen to others in the room about tech transfer in the way, the envision tech transfer in the respective jurisdictions. So it was a good learning which I was surprised, you know, when your many of us are, of course, two decades in the profession themselves, feel that they've learned it all. You come and meet with these people and you start learning everything all over again to only appreciate the subject more. I think that was a great great surprise to me overall. But I do again want to close out by re-emphasizing how technology transfer is a very well-kept secret and how important it is for somebody to embark in this profession. I think many of us do not appreciate what it is. I mean, if you really look at some of the numbers and they are kind of jaw-dropping in that technology transfer sort of contributes to a trillion dollar into the gross domestic product to the US only. I think each country that reads this book will appreciate why that is the case and how they can bolster their own role and functionality in technology transfer to come close to these kind of numbers for their own jurisdiction. So I think there is a lot of good quality information that was shared in the book which is now open for readers to take on. Again, I appreciate CLDP for doing it. I appreciate BookSprint for taking this on and a great, great, great, again, experiential learning for me which unit of itself was surprising to say the least. And Michael, how about you? What surprised you most about this process? I think what surprised me the most is my disappointment the following week that I wasn't part of this again. I really didn't expect to enjoy it as much as I have. And for that, I'm grateful to James and CLDP for including me and to Alisa for exposing me to the BookSprint process. And I know I've met you, Lisa, at another meeting and another co-author of ours. And I know I'll soon see both you, Joy and Lisa and hopefully James too at the autumn meeting. Okay, so these are friendships that will last. But my biggest disappointment is me and I wish I could do it again. It truly was a wonderful experience. James, do you have something you'd like to add? I want to say you're very welcome to the thanks for Michael and Joy. I really want to thank the authors because you all have put yourself out there so that we can sort of unlock technology transfer and some of these emerging markets. So, you know, Joy, Michael, Lisa, the other authors that aren't here, Ed Sparks, Nyra Campbell, Davi, Gazarian, and Richard, of course. But yes, all the authors, thank you so much for being a part of this. And hopefully we'll be collaborating on them and then hopefully we'll be collaborating more as we go forward using the book. Yeah, and I think I speak from Michael and Joy as well as saying, Alisa, you made all the difference in the world. The facilitator was the key. And so thank you for all you did because you brought us together as a group. You kept us together and you kept us motivated. So really your old, a tremendous amount of thanks as well. Oh, thanks a lot, Kisa. That's so nice to hear. But yeah, you are great. You are a great group of people. I didn't have to do much to get those going. And your motivation was up there, so I didn't have to push you much anyway. So as the podcast comes to a close, I have one last question for you, James and you Joy. The handbooks introduction mentions that the contributing authors are committed to adapting this handbook for training courses and technical assistance initiatives. Talk to us about what those next steps are and how this resource will evolve and extend its impact. And James will start with you. So I started to mention that we started rolling out the book in terms of introducing it to some of the, to the emerging markets we've been working with. And we will continue to work with those emerging markets for virtual as well as in person workshops to continue to teach them how to put together a technology transfer. And what that means is we'll be going to the constituents in the different countries. We'll go to government. Ministries will go to universities will go to business associations will try to get all those people together as much as possible. And then we'll go to basically walk through some of the components of the book that are relevant for them. We hope to use the authors for that training. I know everybody committed, but we'll see how many times I can drag you out to exotic parts of the world. Well, I mean, as a reference tool, the book will be used for legislative drafting. CLDP does a lot of legislative drafting. We assist governments and, you know, how do you want this policy to look. But also that, you know, there's reference materials in the book for business transactions. So in trying to bring US companies and emerging market inventors together, there's we will, you know, after matchmaking the different constituencies, we can use the book as a reference tool for licensing agreements and things like that. That's that's the plan for now. We have autumn. We have plans to go to central Asia and and the caucuses will be probably rolling out some of the workshops in the Middle East. And as I mentioned, we don't have plans as of yet, but we're hoping to introduce the book and use it for a training tool and a reference tool in land America. How about you and autumn? Sure. Again, autumn is all educate from what connects or autumn. Personally, again, I'm an instructor and I do a lot of workshops with with the transfer offices around the world as a matter of fact, I just got back from India couple of days ago. And believe it not, I've already started using snippets of this book in my workshop training. I just went to bank our class month and I was actually taking off some portions of the book to exhibit some of the processes of tech transfer that was applicable to that workshop. And then in the idea to do a workshop with some budding tech transfer professionals and again, many of the contents that I revised for the Indian audience came from this book. And of course, it always helps because obviously when you're doing these workshops, you're providing a narrative and everything is pretty breached and quick. But then if you have a high calling to the book, which many and there were several more than 100 people that attended the workshop that we're very happy to eventually receive it and more so by learning that it is basically at no cost to them that they downloaded and they have expressed your sort of interest to try and and and and thank the team for for making this book available to them, which obviously was not something that they were. Getting access to prior to this so I will continue using this book. I've already got several requests for getting signed copies of the hard copy James want to make you. Somehow the conduit to provide those hard copies and then there will be several authors at auto my annual that are already queuing up to get copies of this. I'm very excited about that and of course in any way that I can broadcast or CLDP can help broadcast the book to have members of the tech transfer community around the world to get access to it. That will be fantastic. So long in short of it Lisa, yes, autumn does a lot of workshop and I'm already started using it in a big way and and hope that this going to continue for a while. It's just want to say absolutely we are printing the book as we speak we're translating into Russian. There's a discussion of translating into Armenian and Spanish and then as these you know as the needs come up we can certainly translate it into into other languages. Well James, thank you again for the amazing opportunity that you and CLDP provided all of us and joy Michael and Alyssa great to see you guys again as well. Thank you all so much for being on the podcast today and sharing these insights into the handbook. Thank you Lisa. Thank you so much. Thank you to James, Joy, Michael and Alyssa for this rich conversation about the technology transfer handbook and the innovative book sprints methodology that brought it to life. And thank you again to the entire multi stakeholder group and David, Naira, Priya, Richard for their extraordinary collaborative effort. The technology transfer handbook a policy primer for the commercialization of intellectual property and invention is available in both electronic and print formats at HTTPS backslash backslash CLDP dot doc. Gov/Resources It's issued under a Creative Common License, meaning you can access, share, translate, and adopt it for non-commercial purposes. The Handbook provides essential guidance for policymakers, researchers, tech transfer professionals, entrepreneurs, investors, and anyone working to translate innovation into impact. Whether you're launching a technology transfer office, navigating IP protection, supporting startups, or designing policy frameworks for innovation, this resource offers practical tools, case studies, and strategic guidance grounded in global expertise. For those interested in learning more about BookSprints and how this collaborative methodology has been used across industries to rapidly create high quality resources, you can visit BookSprints at www.booksprints.net and learn more about Alessas work. For our listeners who are members of Autumn or Involved in Tech Transfer, this Handbook represents a significant contribution to our field's knowledge base and practices. I encourage you to explore it, share with colleagues, and consider how it might inform your own work. Thanks for listening to Autumn on the Air. Until next week, keep innovating. Thanks for listening to Autumn on the Air with Lisa Mueller. Get social with us and share your thoughts. You can tweet us at AUTM or visit us online at AUTM.net. We'll be back next week on the Air. Be sure to join us.