A neighboring perspective: technology commercialization in Utah
By Cheryl Coupé, freelance technology writer and Oregon BiO quarterly editor
As part of our focus on technology transfer, we took a peek outside of Oregon for another view. As a Western state with demographics and challenges that are similar to Oregon’s, Utah provides an interesting perspective. We spoke to Richard Nelson, president of the Utah Technology Council, to get his views.
Give them a big, hairy, audacious goal
The passage of Utah Senate Bill 75 – the Utah Science, Technology, and Research initiative (USTAR) – in 2006 established a long-term, state-funded investment to strengthen Utah's knowledge economy. A big part of this initiative was a $400 million investment in research facilities at the University of Utah and Utah State University. The expectation was to develop novel technologies that would be commercialized through new business ventures. These, in turn, are expected to create 400 new companies supporting 122,000 new high-paying, high-growth jobs in high tech, clean tech, and life sciences.
Nelson calls the USTAR effort a big hairy audacious goal, or B-HAG. He says, “If you want to galvanize a community, give them a B-HAG that all those Type-A CEOS are willing to put cycles into and legislators are willing to listen to and hopefully transform their economy.”
"If you want to galvanize a community, give them a B-HAG that [will]… hopefully transform their economy.”
Universities are drivers of economic development
In Utah, Nelson has seen a mindset change within the state’s research universities in which their role goes beyond creating IP and teaching classes. The universities must be drivers of economic development and new, high-paying jobs. Nelson says, “It’s not good enough just to educate a work force. You need to take the great ideas of these professors and the federal funding they get and elevate that.”
The mindset of university leaders also makes a difference. “You have to change the university model,” Nelson explains. “Are you going to run the university as an economic development driver or not? Are you going to track [commercialization], talk about it, hire faculty that are energized by it?”
The USTAR initiative also broadened the reach of Utah’s regional and private colleges with outreach offices outside of metropolitan hubs to assist with access to professors and funding. The goal was to avoid a sense of winners and losers and get buy-in across the state.
Results lead to believers and momentum
Nelson says that technology transfer plays “an absolutely pivotal role” in Utah’s efforts – with a subtle adjustment. “We no longer call it tech transfer,” he says. “It gets bogged down, gets bureaucratic. At the end of the game, it’s really the universities working with industry to commercialize IP to create significant new jobs. So we call it technology commercialization.”
At the end of the game, it’s really the universities working with industry to commercialize IP to create significant new jobs.
It seems the USTAR initiative is making progress. The University of Utah recently announced that it is tied with MIT for first place in the country in creating new start-up companies from research-based inventions, with a research budget that is one-fifth that of MIT’s.
According to Nelson, those results lead to believers and momentum, which legislators and economic development officials can use to drive the state’s innovation economy.
Cheryl
Coupé is a freelance technology writer, editor for EE Catalog (www.eecatalog.com), and the editor-in-chief
of the BiO quarterly newsletter. Find more information at
www.scribo.net or contact her at cheryl@scribo.net.