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National Initiative tries to marry research with investors
National initiative tries marry research with investors
Matthew Daneman • Staff writer • July 25, 2009
LOOKING FOR A HOOKUP — single manufacturing company ISO inventor with hot technology for possible long-term relationship.
The U.S. Commerce Department unveiled the USA National Innovation Marketplace earlier this year — the equivalent of an online dating service for researchers and inventors looking for investors or small and mid-sized manufacturers interested in their technology.
Arkansas, Kansas, Maine and Vermont have since created their own state-centric versions of the Web-based marketplace to try to boost local economies. And some preliminary discussions are going on in New York state to do the same.
"The rest of the country is doing these things as we speak," said John Steele, manager of growth services for High Tech Rochester's manufacturing extension.
Since the marketplace's launch, more than 700 potential products have gone up, from high-resolution biomarkers to a scraper for outdoorsmen designed to remove stickers and burrs.
New York currently has a variety of efforts, such as 15 state-funded Centers for Advanced Technology, that try to link companies with researchers at the state's private and public universities.
Meanwhile, the New York State Foundation for Science, Technology and Innovation has been in discussions about possibly sponsoring a New York-centric version of the marketplace, Steele said.
Numerous businesses have also tried to work as matchmakers, brokering deals between companies and technologies, said Ken Bloemer, executive director of Planet Eureka, an Ohio firm that created the marketplace Web site.
The advantage of the National Innovation Marketplace is that all the listings are in a standardized format designed to be quickly digested by business executives, Bloemer said.
Technology registered with the marketplace is put into a template free of technical jargon. It comes out in color-coded columns that give some indication of the business viability.
"We're trying to take a technical concept and make sure anyone can understand it," Steele said.
Since the site went live in April, the focus has been on building the inventory of innovations and getting companies aware of the technology, Bloemer said.
In a High Tech Rochester conference room in Henrietta recently, technology transfer officers from universities across upstate gathered to learn how exactly to get technology developed in their labs registered in the marketplace.
"We have so much technology out there but we don't have the people," he said.
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