Driving UCD's ideas to market
Sacramento Bee 3/30/07
Andrew Hargadon wants to change that. His solution: go green.
"We're a top-10 university in research, but up until the last few years, we really haven't had an impact that is commensurate with that," said Hargadon, a business school professor who directs the campus's Center for Entrepreneurship and the UC Davis Energy Efficiency Center.
So Hargadon, a former Apple Computer product designer, launched what he says is the nation's first training program aimed at teaching green technology researchers how to commercialize their research.
The five-day course, called the Green Technology Entrepreneurship Academy, wraps up today at the Tahoe Center for Environmental Sciences on the Sierra Nevada College campus here.
Hargadon believes the current green technology boom, and the flood of venture capital that it is fueling it, should be a golden opportunity to turn research into useful products.
Davis researchers excel in areas like energy efficiency. And being close to the Capitol counts for a lot in green technology, he said, because policymakers and regulators play such a critical role in driving its adoption.
But good ideas don't get to the market on their own.
For this week's Green Technology Entrepreneurship Academy, Hargadon brought together 45 science and engineering professors and students from UC Davis and a number of other universities nationwide with business school students and venture capitalists.
During the first four days, the participants brainstormed ideas, consulted industry leaders and cold-called potential customers. Today, they'll pitch their plans to a panel of venture funders, gaining additional experience on how to sell their ideas.
If there's a take-home message, it's this: Pay attention to the customer, not the technology.
"We all like the dual-flush toilets and everything else that's going to change the world, but we have to find out what the customer wants," said Scott Lenet, managing director for West Sacramento venture capital firm DFJ Frontier, during a seminar Wednesday afternoon.
The problem faced by most researchers interested in bringing a product to market isn't a lack of smarts or ideas, Hargadon said. It's mostly a need to understand basic marketing and find the right contacts. So a little coaching can pay off big.
"If you're really looking for the biggest bang for your hour spent, it's bringing an understanding of entrepreneurship to the people who might be able to do the most with it -- and know the least about it," he said.
This week's course is one in a collection of initiatives at UC Davis that aim to hustle more research innovations into the market.
Hargadon has assembled teams of "emerging venture analysts" that work with faculty to develop business models. Earlier this month, the campus Office of Technology Transfer announced its InnovationAccess program, designed to help faculty link up with local entrepreneurs and venture funders.
At the academy Wednesday, Yi Zhu, a food science graduate student, and Josaphine Tuchel, a business school student, worked on their pitch for an energy efficient food-processing technology.
Zhu studies how infrared waves can be used to dehydrate fruits and vegetables and process nuts. The process uses significantly less energy than current methods. Energy is a big deal in California's food processing industry, which collectively uses about 700 million kilowatt hours a year, according to a 2006 study by the California Institute of Food and Agricultural Research.
But Zhu had thought of her work, conducted on a small pilot-scale machine, as a fairly academic study, she said. A few months ago, Hargadon put her in touch with Tuchel, who had a background in the food industry.
Together, they've started to think about marketing. They've talked with food processing companies and equipment manufacturers about how the new technology might fit into their operations.
Now, Zhu and her research adviser, Zhongli Pan, are applying for a grant from the California Energy Commission to build a full-scale infrared dehydrator.
"I hadn't done anything with the business world," Zhu said. "Now I understand what the industry wants."