Labs, Colleges Can Be Agents for Development

The following examples suggest it is reasonable for New Mexico to expect the Department of Energy, Sandia National Laboratories, Los Alamos National Laboratory and the University of New Mexico to be agents for local economic growth. One invention every 50 years with the impact of the Willis Whitfield cleanroom isn’t enough!

Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is a Department of Defense Agency responsible for sponsoring research that resulted in the Internet, stealth aircraft, Global Positioning Satellite (GPS) and autonomous vehicles. Established to promote innovation following the Soviet Union’s launch of the Sputnik satellite, DARPA’s annual R&D budget is about $3 billion compared to $17 billion for NASA and $24 billion for DOE. DARPA is a flat, outcome-driven organization that is lean, agile and permeated with a risk-taking, think-big culture. DARPA expects failure, is free of hierarchy and picks high-payoff projects where the private sector is under invested.

To establish a project at DARPA, the following questions are addressed: What are we trying to do? How does this get done now? Who does it? What are the limitations of the present approach? What is new about ours? Why do we think we can be successful now? If we succeed, what difference do we think it will make? How long will it take? How much will it cost? What are our “mid-term” and “final” exams?

Taiwan’s Industrial Technology Research Institution (ITRI), a government laboratory entity, established an economic ecosystem in the city of Hsinchu to launch Taiwan’s semiconductor chip manufacturing sector. Scientists and engineers from universities and Taiwan’s top engineering institutions were put into this high personnel density, semiconductor chip manufacturing economic ecosystem. Physical settings were designed to promote collaboration. All research was focused on chip manufacturing and fed to a nascent domestic semiconductor industry.

ITRI gave private companies constant access to new semiconductor and semiconductor manufacturing technologies from abroad by directing technology transfer into the Hsinchu economic ecosystem. The outcome is Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), the world’s largest dedicated independent semiconductor foundry, with over $10 billion in annual sales and rapid annual sales growth.

The Greater Salt Lake City, Utah, Biomedical and Software Cluster grew out of efforts by the University of Utah to promote economically relevant collaboration among its colleges. The resulting ecosystem has allowed Utah to sustain an average of 3.5 percent annual economic growth during the last five years, more than any state other than oil-rich North Dakota. Greater Salt Lake City has massive new data centers for eBay, Twitter and Oracle; new offices for Disney Interactive and EA Sports; and a commitment from Adobe to build a thousand-person software-development campus.

The University of Utah recently tied MIT for creating the most companies out of its patented research: more than 80 since 2005. This rate was facilitated by a licensing policy that favored starting a successful company over making money. Provo, home to Brigham Young University (BYU), has the most high-growth companies per capita in the US.

Salt Lake City has brought companies into its economic ecosystem with cheap energy, 5 percent corporate taxes, and well-educated, hard-working employees. The University of Utah has established The Center for Medical Innovation (CMI), a partnership between the College of Engineering, the health sciences colleges, the School of Business and the Technology Venture Development Program. CMI is a place for students and faculty to collaborate and turn innovative ideas into medical products for the market. Undergraduate and graduate students are provided access to the clinical environment to help them identify and understand the unmet needs of medical patients and health care providers. Health sciences students and faculty are provided access to business development expertise and engineering prototyping and design labs. Students, postdocs and faculty are motivated beyond publishing a paper to prototyping, verification testing and commercialization so they can translate their ideas to improvements in patient care.

If the DOE elevates its performance to that of DARPA, SNL and LANL build economic ecosystems that rival the success of ITRI and UNM can spin-off new companies at the rate of the University of Utah, the greater Albuquerque area and New Mexico will experience an economic boom that will make New Mexico the world’s showplace for how to grow a moribund economy.