WII Overview:

1. “Western Innovation Initiative” Oregon State University Ronald Adams, Joe Tanous Melissa Appleyard, Kartikeya Mayaram, Robert Wiltbank NSF Award #IIP- 0917948 3 Year Award Start Date: March 2007 Key Attributes of our Innovation Ecosystem: WII Overview: The Western Innovation Initiative (WII) is organizing, coordinating, and managing resources from various locations for use across the group of participants. It is leveraging resources as well as existing assets from participating educational institutions and is also leveraging resources from financial, service, and corporate partners. Oregon State University, University of Utah, University of Washington, Oregon Health Sciences University, and Portland State University--have been involved in programs which have been successful at significantly improving the number of candidates achieving successful commercialization. Questioning & Curiosity: Exploring unique solutions for research commercialization Knowledge, Experience & Resources Risk Taking: Combining academic, industry, financial and entrepreneurial resources Program Activities: Openness: Overcoming competitive forces between resources • Resources required to commercialize new technologies emerging from universities • Experienced Entrepreneurs-in-Residence (EIRs) who have demonstrated significant expertise both in startup ventures and established corporations; these are essential to fill some of the significant start-up management voices that exist among the participants. • Prototyping capabilities • Unique development facilities • Analysis, Planning and Implementation Via teams managed by experienced entrepreneurs • Developing an evergreen commercialization fund that enables co-investing with other venture capitalists and generates an internal rate of return sufficient to sustain the project without Federal, state, or local funding • Knowledge Transfer / Cultural Shift • Providing the knowledge and tools needed to identify and prepare research projects for commercialization • Identifying and integrating underserved and under-resourced regional universities into this collective. • Documentation and Support to help other groups and organizations, including those underrepresented in the nation’s innovation enterprise, to replicate these achievements • Goals and Metrics • Doubling of the overall Association of University Technology Managers (AUTM) ranking of the WII with commensurate economic impact Collaboration Across Fields: Identifying and Coordinating academic, industry, financial and entrepreneurial resources Placing Partners in “New Environments” & “Playgrounds”: Partnerships formed with over a dozen academic, industry, financial and entrepreneurial entities have been formed for mutual benefit • Leading/Inspiring for Surprising or Unexpected Results: • Collectively the WII university participants create an average of 42 new businesses per year, 1 from every $52M invested in research • 140 companies created since 2005 • Higher rates of success • Private Equity Investments of over $200 million • Over 600 new jobs created • Payroll over $58.5 million • Over 1.3M in State tax receipts • Over $9M in Federal tax receipts • (Illustrative is the combined impact of the University of Utah and the Oregon State University (which have been utilizing these methodologies the longest) Top Contributions: 1. Connecting researchers and scientists to practicing entrepreneurs and/or experts with the specific goal of addressing business formation and the challenge of obtaining financing 2. Developing Human , Financial and physical resources and sharing other unique commercialization facilities 3. Facilitating effective knowledge transfer Partners: Oregon State University, University of Utah, the University of Washington, Oregon Health Sciences University, Willamette University and Portland State University In addition to these university partners, WII is composed of the following partners: The Oregon Nanoscience and Microtechnologies Institute (ONAMI), The Oregon Translational Research and Drug Development Institute (OTRADI), Bend Research, University of Utah nanofab facility), University of Utah Medical Core Research Facilities, University of Washington Research Centers Top Challenges: 1. Different and competing cultures 2. Lack of Funding 3. Knowledge dissemination . PFI . . National Science Foundation Partnerships For Innovation Grantee’s Meeting April 25-27, 2010 Arlington, VA