Technology Transfer Wizard Sees Shortage Of Skilled Entrepreneurs
David Giuliani is the president and chief executive officer of the fastest-growing manufacturing company in the country.
But each time he thinks back on the shaky start Optiva Corp. had in life, he wonders how many other multimillion ideas have died in infancy in some university researcher’s laboratory.
“How many university technologies are lying fallow because there weren’t the right combinations of market awareness, or personal interest, or entrepreneurial skills?” he wonders.
Giuliani and Optiva are the most spectacular examples the United States has to offer of the transfer of university research-based technologies to the commercial market.
Optiva commercialized research at the University of Washington that discovered a way to use sound waves to clean plaque off of teeth.
Optiva manufactures the Sonicare Sonic toothbrush. The company’s revenues have risen from $400,000 in 1991 to $50 million in 1995.
Yet, the technology on which this wildly successful worldwide product is based was “almost stillborn,” Giuliani says, because by themselves, the developers of the technology had no idea how to turn it into a practical product that could be mass produced and sold on a global stage.
Giuliani was in Spokane Friday as the keynote speaker at the Spokane Intercollegiate Research and Technology Institute’s (SIRTI) 1997 Commercialization Best Practices Planning Forum.
The event gathered more than 50 experts in the task of transferring technology to commercial application. Participants in the two-day event will prepare a briefing paper to be presented to the White House, Congress and the U.S. Department of Commerce on critical issues in technology transfer and commercialization.
SIRTI officials say the forum will lay the groundwork for the 1988 Global Commercialization Best Practices Conference, which will draw delegates from around the world.
SIRTI’s mission is to help the Inland Northwest economy by assisting in the technology transfers by wedding the area’s university and business communities.
Over the past two years, SIRTI has been successful in launching more than 23 technology development and commercialization projects. Since January, SIRTI has spun out three new firms.
Optiva is well-known in technology transfer circles for its spectacular success. Giuliani was named 1997 national “Small Business Person of the Year by the U.S. Small Business Administration.
Giuliani’s background was in research and development with Hewlett-Packard.
He says institutions like SIRTI, and its Western Washington counterpart, the Washington Technology Center, play critical roles in launching technology start-ups.
“There is a wealth of technologies deserving to be commercialized,” he said. “Much more so than there are capable personnel and situations to nourish them. We have a shortfall of entrepreneurs who are well schooled and skilled in making something out of an emerging technology.”
When he decided to get involved with Optiva, he said, his research showed him that many others had been allured by the idea of some kind of a sound-wave toothbrush device.
“It was a crowded field of corpses,” he said.
Optiva’s success where others had failed was built on his experience in the design of practical and manufacturable devices, on the talents of the company’s employees, and on a couple of critical government grants.
The “high” in high-technology, he says, refers nowadays to the cost of getting into the game.
The days when you could construct a new technology in your garage are gone, he said.
“It’s hard to do much without a lot of people and equipment.”
So government funding and the guidance of institutions like SIRTI are critical.
The planning forum is sponsored by the U.S. Defense Department’s Advanced Research Projects Agency, the Department of Commerce Economic Development Administration, the National Center for APEC, Pacific Rim Enterprise Center, Washington Software & Digital Media Alliance, Washington Technology Center and American Electronics Association.
, DataTimes