THE NEED FOR DIALOGUE AND MORE EFFECTIVE NETWORKING

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?

TEC Student Entrepreneurship Program

Today was the official launch of the Ingenuity Enterprise Program which includes the TEC Student Entrepreneurship Program supported by the Technology Commercialization Centre (TCC) at the University of Alberta School of Business in collaboration with TEC Edmonton and Alberta Ingenuity. We identify technologies around campus and form teams with MBA students to conduct analyses and develop technology commercialization plans to move science and technology into the marketplace. This year was our first pilot program and we had many MBA students involved in technologies including a new software search engine based on artifical intelligence, an eco-sensitive wood preservatives, mobile telecommunications hardware, and a new method for the introduction of genes into plants via cholorplast transformation. My hope is that the students and other stakeholders involved in these projects will contribute to this blog to discuss their experiences, but also that this communication modality will be used to construct a broader dialogue about technology commercialization in the greater Edmonton and Alberta-wide community.

Technology commercialization is absolutely crucial to spur economic growth and development as well as diversification of the economy. We have great science and a great deal of government money has helped to build this resource. Much less attention has been paid to how we can build on this science to foster economic growth and development--that is how to enable commercialization of science and technology. To do this requires the creation of a broad infratsructure as well as a change in cultural understandings that make technology commercialization an appropriate focal point for our star scientists as well as for our taxpayer dollars. While I have many ideas on this topic, I will leave this post purposively short and encourage others to contribute their ideas and foster a dialogue on these issues. My hope is that this blog may be used as a central point for such a broader dialogue between university, industry, government and others as well as a place for network building and solving practical problems related to technology commercialization. Let the interaction begin!

Professor Michael Lounsbury
ml37@ualberta.ca

Developing a Nanotech Cluster

I'd like to try and summarize and open discussion about Tuesday's presentation by Leigh Hill. It seems like EEDC's efforts at promoting Edmonton's (and Alberta's) nanotech cluster was essentially summarized by Alberta Centre for Advanced Molecular Nanotechnology Products (ACAMP). Searching for this on Google only gives you some burried references and maybe the clearest relationship between all the nano-promoting agencies is given on an NRC site ( http://irap-pari.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca/publications/pr06_13_e.html ):

NRC-IRAP is engaging key stakeholders in the development of initiatives intended to support the growth of a nanotechnology cluster centred in Edmonton, which includes NRC-NINT, Western Economic Diversification, Alberta Innovation & Science, Alberta Research Council, Alberta Ingenuity Fund, University of Alberta and Edmonton Economic Development Corporation (EEDC). For example, NRC-IRAP West is developing a collaborative initiative with EEDC that will strengthen the nanoMEMs Edmonton cluster initiative that is anchored by NRC-NINT.

NanoMEMS Edmonton is a vibrant cluster champion committed to building R&D capacity in 'small tech' not only among local members, but also with similar public-private partnerships around the world. The initiative has led to the creation of the Alberta Centre for Advanced Molecular Nanotechnology Products (ACAMP) in Edmonton and is supporting the development of a collaborative Alberta network of nanotechnology-related organizations to advance the use of nanotechnology in firms. These initiatives will enhance the capability of firms in Western Canada as well as across Canada to utilize emerging nanotechnologies and strengthen the success of up-and-coming companies.

The problem with this excerpt, and with the talk given in class yesterday, is that it is nearly impossible to identify concrete steps that are being taken. Leigh did say progress was slow, but it is not even entirely clear what they are moving towards. From the presentation I got the impression that ACAMP was supposed to act as a sort of incubator by supplying the various tools (physical and knowledge based) to nanotech companies to lure them to Edmonton and help get them up and running. That sounds relatively promising, thought could certainly have been fleshed out more.

Are we talking about a nano-lab/fab that can be 'rented' out to startup companies to save them from requiring large capital investments? Kind of a shared fabrication facility mainly for prototypes? He also talked about three non-physical areas (can't remember exactly what the were): marketing and production services, etc?. Are they consulted out? Subsidized? And where do they expect to get the expertise from?

My feeling is that trying to promote a cluster for such an emerging technology is similar to designing product around a new technology without an identified market. Nobody really knows what the nanotechnology market will look like in 5 or 10 years, and who's to say that once it matures it lends itself at all to a clustered approach? Will there ever be huge application markets for nano devices? Or will they only ever represent niche markets and components to other product?

A technology cluster as discussed in the Costa Rica makes more sense because there are a wide range of inputs that go into designing and manufacturing complete electronic devices. And in that situation clustering suppliers and vendors can streamline the supply chain and get economies of scale on infrastructure investments. Can the same be said of nanotechnologies?

Then again, maybe the nanotech cluster could be based around financing channels, fabrication equipment, research facilities and talent. But for financing and research proximity isn't terribly important thanks to the Internet. Talent specific to nanotech doesn't exist anywhere yet. And equipment can be shipped...

My problem is I'm a free market guy. Subsidies to promote an industry can result in misallocation of resources. Costa Rica had it right with rejecting any favourable treatment of Intel. Make a city/province/country a great place to do business, and the businesses that will thrive in the given environment will move in naturally.

Putting NINT into Edmonton will develop the local talent required for a nano cluster and was probably the most important action in getting the ball rolling. However I would argue that the single most significant factor that will hold back nanotech commercialization, and technology and startup companies in Edmonon in general, is the lack of risk capital. Having a nano incubator with shared facilities and services may be a solution for the nanotech industry as it reduces the need for capital, but doesn't help other technologies and startups and in fact may make risk capital even more scarce for them.