Identity at the Crossroads — Pragati's Tech-Transfer Dilemma

A four-round, advanced higher-education simulation set inside the Office of Research Translation (ORT) at Pragati Institute of Technology, Pune, India. The ORT (founded 2014, 11 staff) manages 240 disclosed inventions of which only 18 were ever licensed, and a single 2019 biotech licence generates 80% of its ₹14 crore cumulative revenue — a one-hit dependency that masks a thin pipeline. On 15 May 2026 the Dean mandates a 3x increase in commercialization outcomes within 18 months on a flat ₹9 crore budget or face restructuring; the anchor licence (~₹2.2 crore/year) enters renegotiation as the licensee threatens to walk; and four high-potential inventions need a combined ₹16 crore — only two can be fully backed. Playing the Director of the ORT, you (1) diagnose the portfolio AND the identity fault line — where each funding choice pulls the office toward 'academic steward' (open inquiry, public good, publication) or 'commercial engine' (revenue, spin-outs, exclusivity); (2) choose a partnership model per backed invention — exclusive licence (high cash, low control), non-exclusive licence (broad access, strong academic fit), university spin-out (highest upside and burden), or sponsored/open-innovation collaboration (preserves publication, modest revenue); (3) allocate the ₹9 crore across the four inventions — the deep-tech clean-energy long shot (₹7 crore, 4–5 yrs, best identity fit), the fast B2B software win (₹1.5 crore, 6 months, identity concern), the strategic-investor medical device (₹5 crore exclusive + board seat), and a non-exclusive base — while resolving the anchor-licence renegotiation and the faculty inventor's threat to publish-and-abandon; and (4) integrate everything into one reconciled identity and an 18-month plan, defending it to the Dean, the faculty senate, and the strategic investor. The math rewards a budget-honest, abatement-of-identity-tension portfolio with a credible commercialization ramp and an aligned faculty inventor — and punishes the five classic errors: pure commercialization that erodes faculty trust and the disclosure pipeline, pure academic purity that fails the Dean's mandate, ceding control for cash via an unexamined exclusive-plus-board-seat deal, ignoring the inventor until she publishes-and-abandons, and budget denial that over-commits across all four so none reaches proof of concept. Final KPIs track Commercialization Index, Identity Coherence, Stakeholder (faculty) Trust, and Revenue (₹ crore), reflecting institutional theory, organisational identity and competing academic-vs-market logics in an emerging-economy tech-transfer context.