Basic Research Set Stage For Good Times, Speaker Says Former President Of High-Tech Trade Group Credits Technology Transfer For Economic Gains

America’s investment in basic research, Tom Ranken believes, is the real reason that America’s post-World War II economy has been so successful.

But if that research had remained the province of university laboratories and government agencies, it wouldn’t have gotten us nearly this far.

“Technology transfer and commercialization are the roots of that success,” Rankin told delegates to the inaugural International Commercialization Conference in Spokane Tuesday.

“Economic development is not about finding new customers for existing stores,” Ranken said. “It’s about finding new stores for existing customers.

“It’s about taking obscure ideas and crafting them into the billion-dollar corporation, the billion-dollar employer of tomorrow.”

Ranken is the former president of the Washington Biotechnology and Biomedical Association. For the past six months he has been president and chief executive officer of the Statistics and Epidemiology Research Corp. (SERC). The biostatistics and health data management company helps companies through the process of getting products approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

Ranken and Brian Janssen, founder and executive vice president of ONYX Software, were keynote speakers for the conference, which continues today at the Spokane Ag Trade Center.

The conference has attracted delegates from around the world to meet with leading experts in transforming pure research into companies and jobs.

The conference is sponsored by the Spokane Intercollegiate Research and Technology Institute (SIRTI), with cooperation of the U.S. Department of Commerce Economic Development Administration.

SIRTI’s mission is to help develop the economy of Spokane and the Inland Northwest by linking university and private research groups with entrepreneurs to transfer technological developments from the laboratory to the marketplace.

Janssen told delegates about his experiences building ONYX Software from a basement enterprise to a significant player in the global software industry.

Ranken discussed his recent efforts at making a company with excellent technology but poor business execution profitable.

He said marrying technology and sound business practices is simple, and suggested that the technological innovator who attempts to run the business side of the company is probably making a mistake.

“In many technology-based companies,” he said, “technology leadership is confused with organization leadership, and the two have very little in common. Companies that are both technologically and organizationally excellent are few and far between, and the best models seem to have two different people in those roles.”

But the rewards for success are dramatic, he said.

He is convinced that the best explanation for the performance of the U.S. economy that in recent years has seemed to defy the old economic rules that tied growth and inflation is the “real productivity gains” in the computer hardware and software industries over the past 20 years.

“And you may recall,” he said, “that 20 years ago, the concept of offthe-shelf software didn’t exist.”