Many inventions/patents/technologies are "no beef in a lot of bun" ;-)) At BeefCAMPus you learn to say, like Petra Keller (small woman on the right hand side): " I don't think there's any beef"
"Where's the beef?" is a catch phrase, which has, since its first usage, become a somewhat universal, all-purpose phrase questioning the substance of an idea, event or product.
It came to public attention in a 1980s television commercial as part of a fast food advertising campaign for the Wendy's chain of hamburger restaurants, featuring the elderly actress Clara Peller (commercials were aired with other people doing the line, but they were less popular). After receiving a competitor's burger with a massive bun (the competitor's slogan was "Home of the Big Bun"), the small patty prompts the gruff Peller to angrily exclaim "Where's the beef?"
More Seriously
Inventors (professor or otherwise) approach the Technology Transfer Offices (TO) of universities regularly probably in excess of 100,000 times every year alone in Europe so we induce from surveys of TOs in Europe. And in the US it's even more. For the TO staff (and everyone else) the big question is: is it worthwhile time and effort (of the professor, the TO etc) to try to commercialize the invention. A common practice is to file a patent application immediately in order to protect potentially valuable intellectual property. But hereafter we also know very few inventions make it to the market place. A lot of effort may have been wasted in IPR management. If only we had a method to "pick winners" at an early stage, it would be possible to weed out those inventions, which will never make it.
Not only the TO staff meet this challenge in their daily practice. Typical seed and venture capital portfolio managers report about how they carry out such a filtering process and find the "one out of a thousand opportunities", in some stages based on time consuming "Technology Valuation" or commercial appraisal.
The poor record (<1:1000) is the background for my using the very American expression : Where's the Beef? (see video) meaning: is there any substance in this? Will it feed me?. Quite often this is the experience for the TO manager or the investor. The topic, the challenge, therefore, is to look through the invention, understand it and decide whether there will be a business opportunity in it. As fast as possible.
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