There is an important conversation happening about technology commercialization in Alberta. Doug Horner, the new Minister of Advanced Education and Technology recently established a task force on Productivity, Value Added and Commercialization to evaluate how to accelerate economic diversification via technology commercialization. While this task force is reaching out to many key stakeholders, we need wider democratic participation on these issues.
What are the key issues and what are some possible solutions? Many emphasize the problem of the lack of capital. Perhaps it would be useful to create a government sponsored venture fund. Perhaps we do need more angel investing. But this Province has a great deal of wealth with many latent angels--so perhaps the techcom community has not figured out how to cultivate enough attractive opportunities that are being developed with experienced managers and entrepreneurs?
We have a lot of great science and technological development at universities such as U of A, but much of this sits on the shelf and never gets connected to people with business experience to move it towards commercialization effectively. How can we catalyze such processes and enable knowledge flows and entrepreneurialism to occur at the interstices between university and industry, scientists and graduating MBAs, nascent organizations and patient capital.
While I believe that there many gaps in the techcom infrastructure that need to be addressed, we also have many valuable resources in the form of great scientists and technoscientific ideas, small and medium enterprises, and seasoned managers and entrepreneurs. We also have many diverse initiatives across various institutions. Much could be gained by harnessing these extant resources much more effectively through the creation of denser networks of interaction. Perry Kinkaid's efforts in creating the Alberta Council of Technologies is ememplary in this regard, but we need many more such initiatives and many more Perry Kinkaids. In addition to industry development via cluster building, we need entrepreneurial opportunity development through networking and efforts to create networks of networks, fostering the creation of brokers who act as links across different networks.
A key problem is information asymmetry and the ability to link, for instance, the scientist with her useful technological idea to the right business mind who can see how to translate that upstream idea into an application and product. Organizations like TEC Edmonton and UTI are obviously key elements in this translation of idea to product, but have limited capacity. We need to build a broader networking infrastructure to make this happen. Communication modalities such as this blog can help to seed this, but the community needs to crescively emerge. It cannot be forced or strategically managed. DIALOGUE IS THE STARTING POINT! WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS?
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5 comments:
Obviously networking events are a great way to expand networking opportunities, but from my experience their effectiveness is sometimes muted because of the 'cold call' feel of it. Sit-down dinners work great, but you tend to only meet a handful of people at a time. Mingling events seem less effective as many people don't know how and who to approach. This is certainly an important skill to develop, but for fresh grads and scientists, may be somewhat weak.
Structuring such an event to force a wider range of interactions might be a good way to help develop these skills. As cheesy as it sounds, something like speed dating might be effective. Unfortunately experienced shmoozers might be put off by it...
One last suggestion I'd like to make is to make this blog a sort of networking hub. Everybody who signs up to be an author already has the account necessary to write their own blog.
Perhaps those interested in participating in the tech comm industry could write a short blog describing themselves, their interest, goals, etc., almost like a CV, and they could be linked to from this site. This could be useful for MBA's, scientists as well as investors. Like minded individuals could then contact each other either directly, or just hook up at the next networking event and further cultivate a relationship.
Stating one's area of interest and strengths is certainly going to make it easier for people to find the like minded people and start networking. I guess it will help if the exchange of ideas is more informal and still within the perimeter of tech comm but expanding into the other areas such as export promotion and investment and so on. What do you think?
While I have very little experience with FaceBook, is that not a more effective tool to set-up a group of Edmonton / regional people interested in tech comm?
Perhaps we should encourage the MBA class and those participating in the blog to set-up a FaceBook account and start linking people together.
Facebook, sounds like a good idea...networking doesnt have to be limited to just one platform, certainly people have their own preferences and if some people prefer to see the face of the person with whom they are interacting, sure face book is good. But I am sure one day,TCC will need their own networking website....
I will respond to Klaus' request:
Drayton Weissenfels Inc is sole Canadian partner for one of the world's largest technology marketplaces in the world. Drayton Weissenfels leverages its relationship to access a network that is made up of 140 000 active registered users, over 11 000 SME's and most of the fortune 500. It represents over 40% of the world's R&D capacity. We connect ideas and innovation to industry. Our clients seek licensing opportunities, joint ventures and R&D augmentation opportunities. We are able to give direct market feedback to innovation providers.We also have an extensive list of technology needs that can provide direction and make innovations more attractive to industry. A few things to keep in mind are
1. What is the value proposition of the new technology?
2. What is the IP coverage of the new technology?
3. What is the development stage of the technology?
4. A clear understanding of what type or relationship is being sought ( licensing, Joint venture etc)
We have the ability to amplify the networking experience as we are able to place technologies in front of most of our network in approx 8 weeks and can also have a more directed approach wiht respect to the target market. I would be interested in having a dialogue with all innovators that can respond to the four criteria mentioned.
Facebook is also a fantastic way to gather the support of the like minded.
Dwayne Matthews
Drayton Weissenfels
www.draytonweissenfels.com
dmatthews@draytonweissenfels.com
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