Sirti Sharpens Its Focus To Maximize Payback

SIRTI is going to be a lot pickier about where it puts its money and its support in the future.

The Spokane Intercollegiate Research and Technology Institute - which has been accused by some of being vague in its mission and uneven in its performance - unveiled a new strategic plan Wednesday that sharply focuses its efforts on projects that hold a clear economic development benefit.

SIRTI’s mission over its brief history has always been to help area businesses convert technological innovation to commercial products.

Sometimes, though, the agency has wandered into technological arenas that haven’t translated into commercial production.

But, “We are not in the business of developing technology,” Lyle Anderson, SIRTI’s executive director, told community business leaders Wednesday.

“We are in the business of developing technology that can be commercialized so we are able to grow businesses leading to effective job creation.

“We need to focus our attention on those kinds of technology that are going to have a payback for our community.”

SIRTI was conceived by the founders of Momentum - a private economic development group made up of Spokane’s business leaders - a decade ago. They wanted a way to bring the region’s higher education resources together into a single research and development facility that could support local companies and help attract new high-technology industry to the region. In 1989 the Washington State Legislature agreed to establish such an institute.

During the past two years, the Spokane area’s business and political leaders have retooled the region’s economic development strategies, emphasizing cooperation and coordination among a broad range of groups and institutions according to a single economic development master plan.

As a part of this initiative, SIRTI has put itself through a sweeping self-evaluation during the past few months. With the help of The Pace Group, an economic development consulting firm, and strategic planning consultant Sharon Kophs, SIRTI came up with the strategic plan presented Wednesday.

Because of the vital role technology-related industries will play in any successful economy, Steve Jenkins of the Pace Group said SIRTI’s role cannot be minimized.

“(SIRTI) is going to be monumental in terms of the success of this community and this region,” Jenkins told the group Wednesday.

In its new plan, SIRTI defines its mission as the promotion, creation and management of “projects and programs that advance the transfer, application and commercialization of technology to grow and enhance the regional economy.”

SIRTI will narrow its focus to three areas. It will promote the development of energy-related technologies, digital technologies, and will examine emerging technologies that may be deemed particularly valuable to the region’s economy.

SIRTI will award grants to “spark creativity in targeted technologies.” And it will develop laboratories to promote testing and demonstration of new technologies, all with an eye on a “fast-track” conversion of those technologies to commercial products.

Under its new plan, SIRTI will work more closely with the Spokane Area and Valley Chambers of Commerce and the Spokane Area Economic Development Council to help recruit and retain targeted technology-based businesses.

A key part of the strategy will be to broaden SIRTI’s financial base. The institute presently is wholly dependent on a federal grant that will carry it through mid-1999. It will seek to develop diversified funding sources.

Part of that effort will be the creation of the SIRTI foundation to channel contributions.

But the theme underlying all the changes is a sharp focus on commercial application of technological developments. In line with economic development goals established by Focus 21, Momentum’s successor, SIRTI has signed onto the economic development initiative with the agreement to produce 300 jobs paying at least $47,500 annually in the community by the year 2000; and the production of $144 million in revenues for the local economy by that time.

“We have reorganized both our staff and our approach to technology development to focus only on those projects that have a clear market opportunity,” said Anthony Lentz, SIRTI’s associate director of technology development and commercialization.

“We will base our decisions not only on good science, but on good business,” he added.

“The bottom line,” Anderson said, “is that SIRTI has moved from the concept of a budget-driven organization to a results and goals-driven organization.”

, DataTimes