American Chemical Society MeetingNew Orleans, March, 26, 2003

“Innovative Approaches To Innovative Science--New Models For Graduate Education ”

Kenneth A. PickarJ. Stanley Johnson Professor and Visiting Professor of Mechanical Engineering

California Institute of TechnologyPickar@caltech.edu

Caltech Entrepreneurial Fellows Program

Observation shows that the process of technology commercialization from university research is still characterized by misunderstanding, dysfunction, lost opportunity

Grand Challenges of the 21st Century

Grand Challenges of the 21st Century

Discover a methodology for moving Technology efficiently

from a University Laboratory to commercial exploitation!

Root cause: cultural impedance mismatch

University Culture acts as a Roadblock to the Commercialization of Research

–Naiveté

•gross undervaluation of the importance and difficulty of marketing,

distribution, finance, product engineering

•Notion that you can sprinkle a relatively small amount of money and effort

and you have a product

–Suspicion

•Paranoia that ideas will be stolen by licensee, VCs, CEO

•Drives poor understanding

–Business school disinterest in subject

•With notable exceptions- lack of focus in “real” business issues

–Present university research culture is “successful” in its own terms

Understandable fear of compromise of research direction

This produces sub optimum results Lost opportunity

– University research that could be converted to useful products is not

– Later-stage stumbling during the product development process (first-pass yield)

– Mis-education of students• Theory vs. practice

– (unnecessary) “stumbling” of entrepreneurial graduates

Significant rewards to improve process

Some Caltech Ideas to reduce the “impedance mismatch”

• Technology Transfer Office

• Entrepreneurial Fellows program

The Entrepreneurial Fellows Program

-An Caltech experiment in Education in partnership with the Art Center

College of Design

What’s the problem?

There exists a gap- a big gap- between a student’s business knowledge and what is required to start a company

There is a cultural impedance mismatch between the academic culture of Caltech and Art Center and the business culture of the outside world

To address this, we created the EFP in 2001

a “boot camp” for intense education in business

Characteristics-9 month 6 month-Post-Grad-Team-Based-Mentors-Fellows receive stipend, business expenses -No degree or certificate awarded

Experimental curriculum

-Orchestrated practitioner/ instructors-Learn/Do

-Integrated Caltech Courses

-Charettes

-Tech Coast Angel Meetings

-Team building

-Fellows act as TAs in Entrepreneurial Class

• Strategy and Leadership• Team Building• Communication and Presentation Skills• Marketing• Intellectual Property and Business Law• Finance and Accounting• Capital Acquisition• Human Resources• Product Design and Management of Technology

Curriculum Learn/Do modules

Funding

•$600 K National Science Foundation•$80K Various Donors Including

•NCIIA•Mohr Davidow•Intel•Motorola•Microsoft•ITC

•In-kind contribution from numerous volunteers•Caltech contributions

•The second group of Fellows “graduated” at the end of March

•In addition to Caltech and Art Center included participation from

– UCLA (Anderson)–USC (Marshall)–Case Western Reserve (Physics)

•Assessment complete

•Rethinking model

Where are we now?

Educational Mission Fulfilled

Large network of Instructors vetted

Assessments indicate very favorable acceptance by Fellows

Model for future

What have we accomplished?

The Nature of the Entrepreneur

Lessons Learned

Initial Thought

Student Entre-preneur

Are the Fellows ‘Students” or “Entrepreneurs”

Final Thought

Student Entre-preneur

Are the Fellows ‘Students” or “Entrepreneurs”

Final Thought

Student Entre-preneur

Are the Fellows ‘Students” or “Entrepreneurs”

Students are well. . . Students

Need to increase and stabilize funding

Lessons Learned

Issue of market discovery and disappointment

Lessons Learned

The Program is highly “efficient”All funds are paid to the FellowsSubsidized by Caltech Lecturers and admin are volunteers

The Program is highly “inefficient”10 Fellows supported by

30+ lecturers, 10 mentors10 member steering committee6 member working committeeDirectorEntrepreneur-in-Residenceetc.

Conclusions

Obvious that we haven’t addressed the “Grand Challenge” !

Conclusions

•Expect “breakage”–Teams–Business approaches

•Increase structure- particularly expectations

Lessons Learned

Thoughts on ways to improve relations between universities and large companies

• Simplicity and speed– Universities have to get their act together and be

easy to do business with• Simpler “term sheets”• Flexibility in negotiation

– Companies need to be pro-active and flexible as well

• Get involved early and continuously• Many poorly-packaged commercialization opportunities• Brainstorm and package market needs

– Work to establish “good examples” of ways to work well

• Compete Universities• Make sure someone really cares within company

– Critical path for fulfilling companies’ innovation objectives for portfolio

– Not just “nice to do”

• Use Employee-Alumni• Couple with hiring of students, professor

sabbaticals?• Look for joint funding

Thoughts on ways to improve relations between universities and large companies

Sponsors – NSF, NCIIA, Mellon Ventures, Motorola Corporation, Intel, Microsoft, Convergent Ventures, ITU Ventures, Sienna Ventures, Mohr Davidow Ventures, California Technology Ventures, Gemstar

Acknowledgements

Steering Committee – David Baltimore, Richard Koshalek, Richard Murray, David Goodstein, Michael Dobry, John Ledyard, Ron Jernigan, Larry Gilbert, Abe Zerem, Puneet Newaskar, Rohit Shukla, Eric Dysart, Jonah Schnel, Larry Gilbert, Phil Weilerstein,

Working Committee – Richard Murray, Michael Dobry, Tony Luna, Steve Diskin, Andy Davidson, Dan Frydman, Dean Schonfeld, Simon Niedenthal, Kit Baron

Visiting Lecturers – Tony Luna, Kimberley Heart, David Zuckerman, Rich Wolf, Dan Frydman, Andy Davidson, Steve Diskin, Chris Halliwell, Patty Burke, Tim Bailey, Bob Michelet, Ken Deemer, Bill Davidow, Jim Brown, Dave Anderson, Brenda Laurel, William Deverell, John Glanville, Sara Hammes, Bill Jenkins, Mark DeFond, Bill Thomson

Mentors – Jim Brown, Andy Davidson, Steve Diskin, Geoff Wardle

Administrators – David Zuckerman, Peter Mendenhall, Renee Rottner, Elliott Andrews, Marionne Epalle, Kathryn Shaw, Grant Stafford, Amit Kenjale, Jin Park, Scott Payne

Video documentary – La Mer Walker

Acknowledgements

References

1. Charles F. Larson, Basic Research and Innovation in Industry"The Boom in Industry Research" in Issues in Science and Technology,

Summer 2000, pp. 27-31.) 

2. Alan Fowler, www.aps.org/apsnews/articles/11306.html

3. Kenneth Pickar, et al, The Entrepreneurial Fellows Program- an Experiment in Education

www.its.caltech.edu/~kpickar/efp/efp-nciia.pdf