Mary Lindenstein Walshok, associate vice chancellor at the University of California at San Diego, answers questions after delivering the keynote address at the symposium "Growing Opportunities for Research Commercialization" Friday, March 15, at Malott Hall. Charles Harrington/University Photography
By Larry Bernard
Can Cornell do a better job commercializing results of its research?
A group of key faculty, senior administrators and top industry representatives believe it can, but how to accomplish it is open to debate. Responding to the "changing landscape" in research expenditures and increased competition, Cornell brought together experts to examine "Growing Opportunities for Research Commercialization" at a half-day symposium on Friday, March 15, in the auditorium of Malott Hall.
"We have some major opportunities here in the next several years," said Edward D. Wolf, director of the Cornell Office for Technology Access and Business Assistance (COTABA), an office established last year to help facilitate the flow of research results into the public sector. COTABA organized the meeting.
Mary Lindenstein Walshok, associate vice chancellor at the University of California at San Diego, told the group in a keynote address that new models of commercializing research are required. Walshok, author of the book Knowledge Without Boundaries: What America's Research Universities can do for the Economy, the Workplace and the Community (Jossey-Bass, 1995), earlier in the day had met with key administrators and faculty to discuss the subject.
"Current models of research, development and technology commercialization no longer respond to society's knowledge needs," Walshok said. For example, university concepts tend to be one-way, she said. "We have outreach, but no 'inreach.' It should be a two-way street."
Also, she said, universities tend to respond slowly to change, but the extraordinary speed with which technology is changing means that university models cannot keep up.
"Technology commercialization today requires not only a rich reservoir of basic research but a supportive regional culture of innovation and highly skilled network of business support," Walshok said.
She advised a "marriage of technology and good management," adding: "Research universities are uniquely positioned to be a catalyst for the development of this culture and these networks through institutional mechanisms."
UCSD has such a mechanism, Walshok said, in a program called UCSD CONNECT, which provides faculty with a network of 450 venture capitalists, accountants, finance managers, lawyers and other professionals who can help develop entrepreneurial opportunities for UCSD faculty.
"We help connect, or broker, scientists and engineers with business. We create the context in which deals can happen," she said.
President Hunter Rawlings told the group that Cornell "owes it to our constituencies to put the knowledge we have to good use."
"Universities traditionally, and let's be candid about it, have been a bit ambivalent about commercial activity and entrepreneurship on the part of the faculty," Rawlings said.
He outlined some potential problems: involvement in commercial activity may take time away from teaching and research; proprietary information could be compromised, hindering the free flow of information; students could be used as low-cost technicians or replaced altogether; and commercialization activities have little effect in evaluating faculty for tenure or promotion.
"I think most of us would agree that while there are potential problems, there also are benefits to closer collaborations between business and industry and university research. Those benefits should run both ways," Rawlings said.
Saying there is a now a "national innovation system" in which government, industries and universities are talking openly, honestly and often, Rawlings described efforts at other universities where he has been an administrator -- the University of Colorado and the University of Iowa -- which have successful commercialization activities, including research parks.
The same can be accomplished at Cornell, he said, but economic activity stimulated by university research should be guided by three principles:
First, economic development is not the principal reason universities exist, he said. "Let's be very clear, for those who think our principal purpose at Cornell is to generate economic development for Tompkins County. It isn't."
Second, university-industry partnerships can be successful, "if we are somewhat flexible in our thinking," Rawlings said. "It doesn't have to be an inconsistency . . . but often it requires flexibility to make it work with rules that date back a long time."
Third, it is Cornell's responsibility to transfer knowledge to the public sector, he said.
Earlier in the day, Rawlings and Norman Scott, vice president for research and advanced studies, met with corporate leaders from Corning Inc., Xerox Corp., IBM, AT&T Bell Labs and Kodak to discuss potential research partnerships.
Cornell already has successful partnership models. For example, the afternoon meeting also featured talks by Che-Yu Li, professor and chair of the Materials Science and Engineering Department and director of the Electronic Packaging Program, which is affiliated with several industrial sponsors, and by Gregory Zack, manager of the Design Research Institute, in which Xerox Corp. scientists work with Cornell faculty and students in collaborative research. They both presented models of university-industry collaborations.
Also, Cornell faculty who have started up small companies as a result of their research shared their experiences: Mary Sansalone and William Streett in engineering, with their company, Impact-Echo Consultants Inc.; John Henion, veterinary medicine, with Advanced Bioanalytical Services Inc., and Gary Harman of agriculture and life sciences, with TGT Inc.
Several of the speakers said they could have used help in developing a business plan, finding links to potential investors and with business consulting information.
Many of the participants said they were pleased with the meeting because it offered an opportunity to discuss issues related to commercializing research, said Marjorie Zack, COTABA program manager. "We are already engaged in promoting research commercialization, and this meeting has given us the impetus to move forward with some additional activities," she said.
John Hopcroft, dean of the College of Engineering, moderated a discussion session, and Daryl Lund, dean of the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, summed up the meeting.
"The university must be nimble," Lund said. "Everything around us is changing. Our rules of operation have to change. . . . Cornell should encourage entrepreneurship and offer advice and become more aggressive in our plan. . . . And we have to find ways to get inventors to think entrepreneurially."
An executive summary of the meeting is available by contacting Marjorie Zack, 255 -4993 or e-mail <mkz1@cornell.edu>.