Guy Diedrich was named to the new System-level post of vice chancellor for technology commercialization last December. Here, he discusses his office’s recent activities, including a trip to China with Chancellor Bob McTeer and the outcomes of the commercialization and investment forum held in Houston last month.
(From
left) Dan Sui, assistant vice president for research at Texas A&M; Guy
Diedrich, vice chancellor for technology commercialization; and Chancellor
McTeer pose with venture capitalists on a bridge at Peking University in
Beijing.
Beijing,
a city of about 15 million, is the capital of the People’s Republic
of China.
Chancellor
McTeer delivered remarks to the China Institute for Policy Studies, an
influential group of business and government leaders that help shape policy
in China.
Diedrich
and colleagues on the golf course with Patrick Li (back row, far right),
vice president of United Win Holdings, one of China’s most prominent
developers of luxury residences and business complexes.
Gov.
Rick Perry addresses the audience at the A&M System Technology Commercialization
and Investment Forum held in Houston last month.
CorInnova,
Inc., was one of 13 start-up companies showcased at the A&M System
Technology Commercialization and Investment Forum in Houston last month.
Thomas Friedman, in his recent best-seller, The World Is Flat, claims that that the technological advances of the last decade or so have ushered in Globalization 3.0—our world has gone from being merely small in terms of trade and commerce to downright tiny. The playing field is level now that you can carry a PDA and access Google equally as well in New Delhi as in New York, Hanoi as in Houston.
Globalization 3.0 is the premise that we in the A&M System Office of Technology Commercialization (OTC) have operated under since the office was established last year. To be competitive, we need to be nimble, not bureaucratic, and to focus on our key customers—innovative researchers and industry partners.
Our job, in keeping with the A&M System’s land-grant mission of improving lives through practical research, is to take technologies that researchers at our universities and agencies have developed and turn them into products that benefit the general public. We do this by licensing the technology to an industry partner who develops the product or by forming a business on our own to manufacture and market the product.
Basically, we are the link or bridge between our researchers and the companies who make these products, which range from agriculture to health care to the environment, commercially viable. This not only benefits the A&M System that originated these products, but the investors who support their production and society as a whole.
Universities around the country are increasingly focused on technology commercialization. American universities collected more than $1 billion in revenues last year from licenses on all kinds of products and created about 425 start-up companies.
The A&M System is a national leader in research and discovery, and we are becoming a national leader in technology commercialization. Our Board of Regents recognized the importance of technology commercialization when it added this to the list of considerations for the tenure process for professors in relevant disciplines in May.
In addition, two recent events underscore this new focus. In September, Chancellor McTeer and I traveled to China with three venture capitalists for 10 days to visit with potential partners at universities, companies, and science and technology parks. Representatives from Texas A&M also were in China at the time and joined us when we had common objectives.
This was a hugely successful trip that will help us leverage our strategic partnerships, which are increasingly important as China continues to be the world’s fastest-growing economy. It is clear that China, with 1.3 billion people, will be critical to the overall health of the world economy and will continue to offer unprecedented opportunities through the foreseeable future. We want the A&M System to be able to take advantage of this potential.
The chancellor—highly admired for his reputation as a maverick and leader in the economics field—gave several speeches and was even interviewed for an hour by China’s television network, CCTV, on a show called Dialogue.
The second recent event is the A&M System Technology Commercialization and Investment Forum held in Houston Sept. 28.
About 80 venture capitalists came from as far away as Japan to learn about cutting-edge technologies developed by A&M System researchers. The technologies have been patented and spun off into 13 independent companies with assistance from the OTC.
The companies, now in various stages of commercialization, are seeking investment capital to further develop their technologies and bring them to the marketplace. Potential investors have taken the first step toward investing in six of the 13 companies, and we are confident that many of these companies will be funded.
One of our major new areas of focus is our Born Big Initiative, based on the idea that companies that have applications in other countries will be more successful if they have ties with organizations in those countries from the very beginning—if they’re truly “born global.” Brett Cornwell, our commercialization services manager, is leading this effort.
In the past, most companies became international only after first creating a presence in the domestic market. Today, in our “flat world,” we think it makes more sense to work with partners in other countries by establishing global start-ups that are co-created and co-owned from the very beginning.
For example, many of the countries the A&M System is working with to commercialize technology are in the developing world: Mexico, India, China, Russia, Qatar and South Korea. We believe that these countries are promising because their economies are growing at a faster rate than those of developed countries and offer greater opportunities for small companies and individual investors. In addition, the A&M System’s areas of strength—agriculture and food products, petroleum, bio-fuels and rural health—are excellent matches for the needs found in these countries.
Over the next couple of years, the OTC will create a presence in some
of these countries through start-ups and satellite offices so that our
relationships there will be full, two-way partnerships in every sense.
It’s a win-win situation for the A&M System, our investors, and
the general public around the world. 