Licensing is tempting because the amounts of money, tasks, skills, and people required are considerably less than in running your own business. Of course, that does not necessarily mean it is the right alternative for you. Before I address the advantages and disadvantages of licensing, it’s important that you understand the business climate within the licensing arena and what it will take to make things happen.

If you are a student or a professor at a university or college with a commercialization/ technology transfer program, you may want to take advantage of the institutional assets and possible access to federal research and development (R&D) funding to get your invention going.

Universities once eschewed technology transfer. They wanted their faculty dedicated to teaching and research, not focusing on making money from their intellectual properties. Wow—it’s amazing how things have changed.

Today institutions of higher learning covet revenue that comes from royalties and equity distributions and sales associated with intellectual property created on their campuses. Here are a few examples of products that generate income for their birth schools: Adenocard (Virginia), Allegra ( Georgetown), Bose Corporation (MIT), Cisco Systems (Stanford University), Gatorade (Florida), Genentech (California-San Francisco), Google (Stanford University), and Lycos (Carnegie Mellon).

“A strong technology transfer program enables universities to recruit top-tier faculty,” Rod Casto, associate vice president, University of South Florida, told the Tampa Tribune. “That furthers local economic development and industry partnerships.”

If you are a student or professor, or if you have a connection to a university with incubator programs and the like, I encourage you to investigate the opportunities. From what I see, the deals they offer to inventors are fair, given the institution’s investment and risk.

Since we licensed our first product, Star Bird, to Milton Bradley on January 1, 1978, industry has changed, pushed by technology and economics in a restless, volatile atmosphere. A dramatic paradigm shift has taken place, and inventors who do not understand and adapt will be left behind like last year’s Christmas toys. Just as businesses are reinventing themselves, inventors must do likewise or risk perishing.

The skill sets required to succeed today involve much more than technical talents. Manufacturers are no longer dependent upon the same kinds of products. Witness the explosion of new technologies; business models have changed. Marketing, not R&D, drives product decisions. There are uncertain executive hierarchies.

While inventiveness remains a very critical element, I find myself depending more and more on business and marketing skills. You must be able to organize and inspire teams of creative people, provide leadership, navigate bureaucracy, analyze market opportunities, and narrow the focus while still seeing the big picture.

Today companies favor developing extensions to established lines versus launching new products. The Complete Idiot’s Guide is an example of brand extension. There are hundreds of titles in this line. I felt my work would fare better under a strong and successful brand like The Complete Idiot’s Guide than as a one-off title battling for shelf space.

Brand licensing is estimated to generate around $187 billion worldwide. Many of my products have been based on marquee brands: Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus: The Game (Mattel); Chicken Soup for the Soul: The Game (Cardinal); Warner Brother’s Trivial Pursuit (Hasbro); Duncan Yo-Yo key chains (Basic Fun); and the Easy Bake Decorating Sensation Frosting Pen (Hasbro), among others.

It is less risky for a manufacturer to launch a product within an existing brand than to dig out of a hole with something new. Try to adapt your invention to an existing line of products, to take advantage of brand equity.

We independent inventors must work closely with our licensees. We have to invest ourselves in our products far beyond the invention stage. It is important to take an active role in whatever needs to be done—for example, finding engineering and design talent, sourcing components, conducting patent searches, pulling together research, writing and editing instruction manuals, creating package copy, and flying to R&D and marketing meetings, often in return for only expenses.

Your eye should be on the larger prize if you want to make money as an independent inventor. Position yourself as a de facto project manager; be the adhesive that holds things together and the oil that keeps things moving when problems arise and when people lose focus or, worse, confidence.

I taught our daughter, Bettie, an executive in the music industry, that in business up to age 24, it’s about “know how.” To advance a career from there, “know who” plays a huge role.

The company you are pitching must reach a level of comfort with you and have confidence in your capabilities. You must become a family member. Obviously, this relationship takes time to establish; just remember that you are always selling yourself first and your concept second. This way, if the idea is not accepted, you’ll still be invited back.

Depth of involvement with the companies may mean fewer ideas generated and prototyped, but you will likely see a higher percentage of placements and new product introductions. This is because of the value your assistance adds to each project. It comes under the heading of taking care of your customers. If you do not take care of your customers, somebody else will.

To further complicate matters, we once created concepts for people with a nose for product, risk takers passionate and genuinely excited by innovation. Today we see more companies run by financial types and MBAs whose logic and overanalysis deftly immobilize and sterilize ideas. They spend less time with the inventing community and more time with the investment community. Their companies cannot grow evergreens because each year they cut down the forest and plant a new one. Alas, a very short-sighted, pump-and-dump, day-trader mentality pervades American industry.

Once I addressed a prestigious business school. In the audience were 130 graduate students and professors. I asked the future MBAs, “How many of you have an idea you’d like to see commercialized, something for which you have passion?” Not a single hand was raised.

A few weeks later, a friend to whom I told this story was talking to his son’s fourth-grade class. He asked the 36 9- and 10-year-olds the same question. Every hand went up.

I may make what happens between elementary and business school the subject of another book, because this transition has changed the way industry does business.

To help you make the decision on how best to commercialize your brainchild, here are some positives and negatives to consider about licensing versus do-it-yourself. This information was prepared, in part, by the Argonne National Laboratory.