History of Technology Transfer at BBN

Abstract

BBN's basic business since its founding has been contract consulting, research, and development. This article describes BBN's activities from 1948-1989 to transfer technology and intellectual property from its basic sponsored consulting, research, and development business into a variety of commercial and other products and services. This article was intended to give a sense of the varied technology transfer activities that took place at BBN over the better part of 40 years. Although the push to commercialize technology was certainly driven by BBN's board of directors and corporate management, many members of the technical staff also considered it extremely important that their ideas and invention be brought to market. Further, key members of the management and technical leadership teams that compromised BBN's commercial subsidiaries were often drawn from the company's professional services divisions. Finally, management always paid great attention to share in any financial benefit derived from commercial applications of their work.