 |
[PDF Download of Speech]
The National Academies
Board on Science, Technology, and Economic Policy
Conference on Understanding Research S&T Parks:
Global Best Practice
Held on March 13, 2008
University Innovation, Entrepreneurship and Research Parks
C. D. Mote, Jr.
University of Maryland
In the spectrum of research parks M Square is a small endeavor, very much focused on serving the University of Maryland. Nonetheless, it serves a purpose at the University that cannot be served in any other way.
The University of Maryland places a high value on innovation and entrepreneurship in everything it does, and this culture leads directly to a partnership mode of operation. Having healthy partnerships expands assets and the domains of institutional operation. Partnerships also increase the speed with which people can execute their operations.
Today's partnerships between universities, industries, and government are increasingly globalized and exist in many new combinations. In a university a partnership might form at the faculty or college level, or as a consortium of universities. In industry, partnerships may form at the level of multinationals, local firms, or industry associations. In government, partnerships may involve cities, states, regions, and entire countries, raising the complexity of the average partnership far beyond what it was 10 years ago. The Research Park fills the need for a multi-purpose structure where partners from multiple sectors can interact in the physical proximity often critically important to innovation. For a university, a park can bring about a powerful expansion of the university's mission.
I want to talk about the Research Park in the large, but first I would like to speak about an unusual example: the UM-China Research Park.
An Unusual Partnership with China
The openness of the University of Maryland has led to one unusual international
partnership based on the research park concept—the UM-China Research Park.
This partnership originated in 2002, when Xu Guanghua, then Minister of Science
and Technology of the PRC, was looking for a site in the United States to develop
a university-industry-government research park partnership. The University of
Maryland was selected, agreeing to provide services from both the School of Engineering
and School of Business, along with a University outreach group. Staff members
were sent from China to help develop the park, and in summer 2007 the University
sent two vice presidents and two deans on a tour to recruit Chinese companies.
Working in Beijing, Shanghai and Suzhou under the sponsorship of the Ministry
of Science and Technology, Maryland has recruited about ten company prospects
for the park.
This partnership has produced a number of additional programs,
including a flexible training program for Chinese middle-management executives.
These executives have designed their studies to cover a wide range of topics,
including the U.S. government, management, Olympic Games management, democracy,
banking, and finance. Over the last decade about 1,000 people, in groups from
4 to 40, have come for two months to a year of training.
The University also
hosts a Confucius Institute Program, created after China's admission to the World
Trade Organization. Set up by the Chinese National Office for Teaching Chinese
as a Foreign Language, its purpose is to help other countries learn about Chinese
culture and language. After a pilot of this program at Maryland in 2004, the
program was fully adopted and has sprung up at more than 40 sites in the U.S.
and more than two hundred around the world. The University also has degree programs
in business, journalism, and criminal justice that are located in China or that
bring Chinese students to them in Maryland. Additional collaborations in agriculture
and public policy are also active. About 1,000 international Chinese students
are enrolled at the University.
Partnership with the State and Industry
Research Parks thrive on innovation. I am going to tell you a bit about
how this works at the University of Maryland. The entrepreneurial and innovative
spirit of the University has led to activities with many partners. One of these
is the Maryland Technology Enterprise Institute (MTECH), a partnership between
the University of Maryland and the State of Maryland. For more than 20 years,
the Institute has carried out economic development activities for the State.
One of them is the State's most successful business incubator that was created
in 1985 at the University of Maryland. MTECH also runs a bioprocess scale-up
facility, which allows companies to scale up their processes from bench-level
bio-process to the bio-production scale. Another major activity is Maryland Industrial
Partnerships (MIPs), a research program that brings faculty members and companies
together to solve problems creating greater valued products. In addition, a Venture
Accelerator program helps move technologies developed by faculty and students
to commercialization, and a Technology Start-up Boot Camp brings hundreds of
would-be entrepreneurs from inside and outside the campus to short courses on
entrepreneurship.
These and other related activities have brought about $17 billion
in economic impact to the State of Maryland since 1984, with about $14 billion
of this from research activities (MIPs). MTECH is credited with impacting about
7,000 jobs since 1984, a significant figure for a small state.
As might be expected,
the School of Business at the University is integrally involved in such programs.
The Dingman Center for Entrepreneurship, founded in 1986, is an entrepreneurial
institute within the Business School that focuses on enterprise creation. Major
features include a networked program to improve capital access, an executive
mentoring program, and the weekly "Pitch Dingman" competitions where entrepreneurs
pitch their business ideas over a brown-bag lunch for the chance to win a $500
seed grant.
A major asset of UM is its location near many federal agencies and
institutes. Some have research and training partnerships in the M Square Research
Park and on campus, including the NOAA, NIST, FDA, NASA, SBA, NARA and others.
The Need for M Square Research Park
With such assets and other entrepreneurial activities one might wonder, why does
the University need a research park? Let me give you the scope of the Park: two
miles inside the Washington Beltway, the M Square Park provides more than 2 million
square feet of space on a 128-acre site. It will attract some $500 million of
private construction and create about 5,000 jobs. It has received $5 million
from the State of Maryland for infrastructure. Important surrounding features
include facilities of the FDA, the American Center for Physics, Raytheon, USDA,
the Metro/MARC Transit Station, and Baltimore-Washington International Airport.
The Park allows UM to benefit from complicated partnerships on a global scale.
For example, the Park adds physical space and facilities that are not available
on the university campus. It also creates the opportunity to do proprietary or
classified research, which is not easily done in an academic environment. Another
bonus is that the Park can accommodate a large off-campus work force to achieve
the clustering, resonance, and mutual energy of people working and thinking together.
Finally, the Research Park can bring in non-university participants who may have
specialized needs such as security.
Considerations such as these anchored the creation of M Square. We sought to
attract groups that would benefit from being close to the University and who
would bring benefits to the University as well. Most Park activities fall under
one of four broad science and technology themes: homeland and national security,
environmental and earth sciences, food safety and food security, and languages.
Under earth and environmental sciences, NOAA is creating a new National Center
for Weather and Climate Prediction in the Park. Being constructed on ten acres,
the Center will partner with the University and with NASA/Goddard Space Flight
Center, and will employ about 800 people. Already in the Park is the Joint Global
Climate Change Institute, run jointly by UM and the Pacific Northwest National
Laboratory and funded by the Department of Energy. Another tenant is the Earth
Systems Science Interdisciplinary Center, a $25 million-per-year program specializing
in earth system modeling.
Two other Park themes are language and national security in a broad context.
A major initiative established under these themes involves both the Center for
Advanced Study of Language (CASL), a University-affiliated research center funded
by the government, and a National Foreign Language Center that studies uncommon
languages. The Center has also established the Star Talk pilot immersion summer
camp program. Two other programs on the campus that interface with this initiative
are the National Flagship Language Program in Persian and the National Flagship
Language Program in Arabic.
The Intelligence Advanced Research Project Activity (IARPA) is also located there.
This new government program modeled on DARPA, consolidates the highest level
of forward-looking intelligence research. A central reason for the Park's selection
by IARPA was access to the university and other related activities. Other "seeds" for IARPA were the Joint Quantum Institute, a university partnership with NIST, and the Center for Advanced Study of Language. The ability to partner with IARPA, which would not be possible on a university campus, illustrates again the value of the Research Park.
The final theme is food safety and features four programs:
U.S. Department of Agriculture Animal and Plant Health Inspection Services (APHIS)
Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition (CFSAN)
UM/FDA Joint Institute for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition (JIFSAN)
UM Center for Food, Nutrition and Agriculture Policy
Also in the Park is the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Services, which partners with other activities on campus, including the Avian Influenza Project, a consortium of 17 institutions funded by the USDA and led by the University.
FIGURE 1 M Square
Although the Park is small in relation to many parks, it does make an important contribution to the University of Maryland and the larger community. The Research Park serves the mission of the University by adding dimension to its partnership opportunities with industry and government on a global scale that cannot be fulfilled in any other manner that we have discovered.
DISCUSSION
In response to a question about the qualifications for inclusion in the park, Dr. Mote said that each proposal must be considered in light of one primary question: Does the campus benefit from having the proposed entity in the Park and does the entity benefit from being close to the University?
Dr. Wessner asked what kinds of policies could have made the Park work better. Dr. Mote replied that once the State or county government sees that a park is credible and functional, more investment in the start-up phase is key. M Square is now probably beyond the "valley of death," where many new ideas perish for lack of support, but the Park was helped by a sequence of extraordinary agreements with CASL, NOAA and IARPA. Even so, timely financial support from the government would have reduced start-up difficulties and accelerated progress.
Asked what principles have led to the successful start of M Square, Dr. Mote cited the design of partnerships that bring benefits to both the University and tenants. Most of the tenants came because they were attracted by University assets. It would be even more desirable if it had additional land, with affordable housing and town-center attractions for tenants. The latter should be provided by the 38-acre, $900 million East Campus development that is currently underway between theUniversity and M-Square.
On the topic of potential conflicts between University standards and confidential work, this is a relationship that has to be carefully managed. Graduate students are not allowed to incorporate classified or proprietary research into their degree programs or dissertations, but they are allowed to work on such projects. In fact, their presence is attractive to employers and has been used as a recruitment tool. The University has also developed ways to hire people jointly—for
example, faculty may have joint appointments at NIST and UM in nanotechnology.
The University offers special appointment opportunities for people at government
labs and industry, including the title of College Park Professor, which does
not guarantee salary but otherwise confers most of the rights of a faculty member,
such as the ability to supervise graduate students' research projects and serve
as a PI on research proposals.
In response to a question about intellectual property,
Dr. Mote said that there is significant effort to commercialize intellectual
property developed at the University, led by the Office of Technology Commercialization
(OTC) , or UM-net, a network of researchers and entrepreneurs. OTC is constantly
looking for entrepreneurs who want to engage in this way. In the Research Park
they can do proprietary work and bring in others from outside the university
with strong encouragement from the University.
 |
