The History of Techno-L
As a brand new Licensing associate at MIT, Ms. Baranski Walker was seeking a way to gain as much knowledge as she could and found that there was a dearth of training tools and opportunities in her office and elsewhere within the University Tech Transfer Community. She created the Techno-L with free Listserv software and because she was employed at MIT, she was permitted to host the Listserv there.
Ms. Baranski Walker joined SRI in 1994 and that year SRI agreed to host the Listserv on their servers at no charge. Mr. Scott Taper joined SRI in the middle of 1995 and took over the list from Ms. Baranski Walker when she received a grant that year. At that time the list had between 200 - 300 members. With Mr. Taper's fresh enthusiasm, the list grew to over 1,000 members by 1999. Given the amount of computer resources and the bandwidth the list was using, that at the time was significant, SRI indicated that it could no longer host the list for free and would charge for any maintenance services they provided. Since volunteers were running the list, they didn't have the financial resources to continue hosting the list at SRI, a new home for the list was sought.
UVentures bought the list in the Fall of 1999 as it was launching its Tech Transfer web site. The purchase was a great addition to the UVentures web site. There was initially significant concern among the Techno-L community that the list would become too commercial in the hands of UVentures or any other business. To allay those concerns, UVentures agreed to several requests prohibiting the commercialization of the Listserv such as maintaining it as a free resource and no advertisements permitted. UVentures added several features to the list such as a searchable archive on its web site as well as a digest version, which was needed due to the growth in the volume of posts.
UVentures continued to run and manage the site until it was sold to UTEK Corporation in the Fall of 2003. UTEK had previously purchased TechEx and was consolidating the online Tech Transfer sites. UTEK added to the stability of the list and archival capabilities.
In March 2010, UTEK consolidated their businesses and services under the brand name Innovaro®. Innovaro's vision is to fundamentally change the way that organizations innovate, helping them to achieve increased competitiveness, productivity, and business growth. Today, under Innovaro's stewardship, Techno-L continues to serve its list members from hundreds of universities and companies from around the world.