Feb. 16, 2003

Opinion: Work on the Front End

- from The News & Observer

By Angus Kingon, special to the News & Observer

© Copyright 2003 The News & Observer Publishing Company.

Angus Kingon is professor of materials science and engineering in the College of Engineering at N.C. State University and executive director of Technology Commercialization Programs in the College of Management.

There is no doubt that universities, especially large research universities, have a substantial effect on the regional economy, both directly through their size and buying power, and indirectly via the spillover of science, technology and innovations to the surrounding community.

But the issue facing us in difficult economic times is, what new roles can the university play in jump-starting the state economy?

Creating new, high-paying jobs is critically important. The most direct way is through creating new ventures that have high growth potential. It could be argued that N.C. State is already successful in this endeavor. It can point to many new companies that have their origins in the science, technology and creativity of NCSU faculty and students.

But should we, as a university, rest on our laurels? With roughly $130 million of funded research, how many startups should we expect to create in a year? How many jobs can we hope to spawn from this rich technology base and talent pool? We are nowhere near achieving the full potential. We could be achieving far, far more, with relatively modest investment.

I base this statement on the experience we have gained over the past few years in developing the Technology, Entrepreneurship and Commercialization Program at NCSU. This program, developed with federal money, teaches technology-based entrepreneurship to graduate students, including those pursuing MBAs as well as degrees in science and engineering.

This program has been successful in providing students with entrepreneurial insight, knowledge and skills, with the side benefit that student projects have led to the creation of a number of high-growth companies. These companies currently represent more than 250 jobs for the state and about $120 million in venture capital investment. An example is Liposcience, a company out of the NCSU biochemistry department.

The TEC program has come to an extremely important realization -- that there is one absolutely critical and underestimated step in the process of converting a technology into a success in the marketplace. We term this the "front end of innovation," where the ideas are created and evaluated, the connections made between a technical capability and the conception of a unique product with attributes that give valued benefits to the customer. In other words, this is where the science and technology are translated into a competitive business concept that can capture a product's commercial value.

This front end is an essential first step to new venture or new business creation, but up to now it has not been well defined or understood. The TEC program focuses on this area with well- defined processes that are at the heart of our teaching program. Additionally, we have found that these same processes are directly applicable to technology-based corporations, where they can be used to guide business development.

What then is the message?

We need to expand the teaching of the "front end of innovation" processes to a much wider audience, getting a larger number of well-equipped and entrepreneurially minded people into the community. We need to place resources to encourage much more activity in translating promising science and technology into competitive business propositions with the goal of new venture creation. This "encouragement" can be to both university faculty and students as well as to community constituents such as individual entrepreneurs and small and large companies.

Programs such as the HiTEC could be expanded. HiTEC is a new organization with business analysts trained to offer services to the community, specifically in creating tech startups. This service could be viewed as a modern variation of university "extension services" to the people of the state, in the land-grant university tradition.

For more information on TEC, visit hitec.ncsu.edu.

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