Remember the Georgia Tech strategic plan? You should… it has “innovation” (EI2′s middle name!) all through it. Under Goal 3, “Innovation,” it says “Establish world-class initiatives to serve Georgia Tech, the state, and other strategic national and international partners.” Over a year ago, Steve Cross convened an innovation task force which met for several months; I was the EI2 representative. Several new programs and procedures have emerged from that task force, including GT:IPS and industry.gatech.edu. The most visible is Flashpoint.

Under the leadership of Merrick Furst (Distinguished Professor in the College of Computing), a team drawn from all across campus opened applications last summer, and accepted the first class (or “cohort”) of seventeen teams. Each team was between two and five people; at least one member of each team had to be a strong technologist. Four of the teams were based on GT research licenses, but over half had some sort of relationship to Georgia Tech (current faculty or students on teams, or active alumni, etcetera).

And we recruited nearly 40 mentors, from young entrepreneurs to experienced corporate executives to seasoned venture capitalists.

And some friends in the local venture capital community organized a small investment fund to invest in the Flashpoint teams.

And Georgia Tech rehabbed some empty space for us on the third floor of the 828 West Peachtree building (conveniently across from the Technology Square Starbucks).

And then we got started in mid-August 2011.

The Process

In my November 1 column, I wrote this about Flashpoint:

The last thought I’ll leave you with is that, as the nation’s largest engineering school, we think we’re pioneering a new discipline that Merrick has named: “startup engineering…”

It’s a long way from perfect, but it’s very different than the process of just 10 years ago. It’s an exciting time to be in this business.

That was only halfway through the process, but now that we’ve finished the first cohort, we’ve learned some things. Merrick is now using this as the definition of Startup Engineering:

Unlike for-profit accelerators, Flashpoint is primarily an educational program. The “textbooks” for the educational portion of Flashpoint were:

• The Four Steps to the Epiphany
• The Lean Startup
• Business Model Generation

These books emphasize the importance of understanding your customers, distinguishing facts from opinions, and being able to rapidly iterate your business model based on market feedback. They have led to something of a “Lean Startup” cult in Silicon Valley, but they’re not only applicable to startups — they’re good roadmaps for anyone trying to create something new, including innovators inside large corporations or government agencies (or, dare I say, universities!). Well worth reading. (I suspect that Tim Israel and half the folks in MEP will say “Duh! We’ve been preaching this for years!”)

In the first book above, Steve Blank famously states that “In a startup, no facts exist inside the building, only opinions.” So we’d insist that each team spend a significant portion of each week “outside of the building” talking to potential customers. Every Tuesday, the teams and mentors would assemble for pizza around 6:00 pm, and spend the next four or five hours thrashing through what they had learned from these customers that week, and how that would affect their plans for the next week.

Then, the next Tuesday, they’d do that again. And again.

In between, there were weekly seminars and frequent one-on-one mentoring meetings. Teams spent the first several weeks trying to optimize their business models before concentrating on writing code. And the business-model work continued all the way through the end of the program during the holiday break. From mid-August through mid-December, an extraordinary amount of work got accomplished. Sometimes you’ll hear us say “Flashpoint isn’t an incubator, it’s an accelerator.” Acceleration happened.

The Result

On January 10th, the fifteen surviving teams presented their results to a standing-room-only crowd at the GTRI conference center. They did it again at Union Square Ventures in New York on January 18th. And they finished up to a crowd of over 100 Silicon Valley angels and VCs on January 26th, hosted by Andreesen Horowitz in Menlo Park. You can read some of the press coverage here. The short answer is: it worked! At least three of the teams already have term sheets, several more are in detailed negotiation with investors, and every single team attracted at least one follow-up meeting in each of the three cities.

I like to highlight the story of Pindrop Security (one of the ones with a term sheet) as an example of how “it takes a village” to create a university spinout. Pindrop:

• started with a professor in one of GT’s research centers, and
• a graduate student in the College of Computing.
• Once it appeared they would be creating intellectual property would be worth protecting, they worked with GTRC to secure patent coverage.
• They received an NSF grant with the help of our SBIR Assistance Center, then
• received Georgia Research Alliance funding
• managed through our VentureLab program.
• They licensed their GT intellectual property through GTRC.
• They won the TAG Business Launch Competition, which brought them additional funding and heightened visibility from
• the local entrepreneurial community. Paul Judge joined as chairman.
• They joined ATDC and moved into the Centergy building, then
• were selected for the first Flashpoint cohort
• and began talking to major corporate clients.
• At the end of Flashpoint, they attracted investment from local angels and
• from a highly-respected Silicon Valley venture capital firm.

Some of you will remember that, when I interviewed for this job three years ago, I presented a slide based on Jan Youtie’s work explaining how universities are becoming “knowledge hubs,” and my vision that EI2 would be the focus of that hub for Georgia Tech.

Mission accomplished. Now let’s do it again. And again.

What’s Next?

Merrick and the team are taking a deep breath to analyze what we learned in the first cohort. Applications for the second cohort will be accepted in February at the Flashpoint web site, and the teams will assemble on campus in early June for another four-month sprint. The Flashpoint curriculum should be applicable to startups in any field, not just software. We’re actively trying to expand the focus, and would appreciate any suggestions — or nominations for the expanded mentor field.

And, for our next cohort, we are planning to add to the mix by including a small number of teams sponsored by corporations that are looking to use Flashpoint as a new way to manage disruptive innovations. If one of your clients is a corporation trying to figure out how to disrupt their existing business model (before their competition does it to them!), let me know. Flashpoint should have something new and valuable to offer. We suspect that Georgia Tech will eventually offer continuing education in “startup engineering” to companies of all sizes.

(Incidentally, Flashpoint costs money to operate. Our first premier sponsor was SAIC, and we just added United Technologies Corporation at that level, along with some lower-level sponsors listed on the Flashpoint site. We also have many corporate supporters. Let me or Christina know if you have a client who might want to be involved.)

And, internally, we’re applying the Flashpoint lessons to our EI2 startup services. Flashpoint isn’t going to replace ATDC or VentureLab. But the “lean startup” concepts and our new field of “startup engineering” will start to be used as foundations for many of the services that Nina Sawczuk’s team offers.

Launching Flashpoint was chaotic, stressful, exhausting, and occasionally contentious… just like a startup! We’ve learned a lot, and we’ve established Georgia Tech as a national player in this new field of building lean startups on a firm academic foundation. I’m proud of all the EI2 people who played a part, and look forward to getting more of you involved in the future.

As always, keep up the good work.

Stephen

I own fourteen stylus-based notetaking apps for the iPad. (Yes, I’m obsessive. Trying to recreate my long-lost Newton experience.)

I love Noteshelf for the iPad, but there are some parts of the user experience that could use some work.

This post is aimed at Fluidtouch tech support. Fingers crossed!

System Preferences

You have page and notebook preferences, but I want to have system-wide preferences as well. Specifically, when opening a new document, I want to be able to have my default:

• zoom on/off (for me, always ON)
• magnification level
• left-right zoom split
• pen size/color

Personally, I never plan to write in the top half of the screen, so I dislike setting all this up every time I create a new notebook.

Managing Notebooks

When creating a new notebook, I always want to give it a name. The cursor should be pre-selected into the “Title” field with the keyboard ready to type.

I’d like a way to quickly switch back and forth between multiple notebooks.

I’d like a way to easily and intuitively move pages back and forth between multiple notebooks. Think split-screen Norton Commander.

Pen settings should be saved with notebooks.

Zoom Editor Changes

In the zoom editor, there should be a button to jump the editing rectangle to the top left corner of the page (see mockup below).

The zoom rectangle should snap to zoomed lines on stationery. In other words, if the rules are 36 points apart, the zoom rectangle should only move vertically in 36-point jumps. And there should be a button to jump up one line (see mockup below). Think “Snap to Grid” in a drawing program.

Finally, the “New Line” button in the zoom editor is by far the most common target in that vertical row of buttons. According to Fitt’s Law, it should be bigger (see mockup below).

The zoom level should be a slider, or at least have more granularity… I think 2.75x would be perfect.

The page-forward/page-back arrows in the split bar are too small.

Pen Behavior

I want to be able to set pen sizes independently for the three colored pens (in my case, 1-point black, 2-point blue, and 5-point red would be perfect).

There should be a way to use the eraser for one motion, then have the pen instantly snap back to whatever I was using before. (Example: writing in blue ink, select the eraser to clean up a glitch, then I’m writing in blue ink again).

Infinite-Length Pages

Why should an infinitely-expandable notebook be limited to A4-sized paper? False skeumorphism (I love that word!). I would like a page to scroll as long as I want, only switching pages when I manually create a new page. Basically, when I’m writing, I want to *keep* writing, and not be nagged with the irritating little minutiae of creating a new page, getting the zoom box in the right place, and regaining my stream of thought. I want to be able to keep writing!

Handwriting Recognition

Exporting to Evernote doesn’t cut it, and I’m worried about confidentiality anyway. Until Apple enables Inkwell for iOS… license Phatware!

Cutting and Pasting

Need to have a non-rectangular selection option for cut/paste.

I always seem to miss the last step in committing a “paste”… rethink?

Icons

I find the collection of icon stamps completely useless. First, because it doesn’t work in zoomed mode, so it might as well not exist.

Second, if I’m willing to drop out of zoom mode (and I’m not), I don’t want to scroll through five pages looking for one that I want. I want the initial two-row drop-down to be a “favorites” tray where I can place the two dozen icons that I want to use 99% of the time, and have those instantly accessible when I hit the smiley-face. If I want something else, 1% of the time I’ll hunt around in the “More” pages.

Paper Templates

There should be an editor for new paper templates… either built into the app, or downloadable on the iPad. I’d even pay another buck or two for it.

I want to edit the right-hand margin of a template… in other words, how close do I have to get to the right-hand edge of the screen before I automatically get moved to the next line? The existing red-dotted-line is way too close to the edge; I want to move it out a quarter of an inch.

Bugs

Sometimes when navigating around, the zoom rectangle in the top half of the page gets completely obscured. That should be impossible.

Future

I bought an iPen from Kickstarter… haven’t received it yet, but I hope it meets expectations. If so, I really hope you support the API! I’d hate to have to switch to another notetaking app.

I hope this list is useful… obviously, I use the app a lot, or I wouldn’t spend this long making suggestions to improve it!

The impetus for the bill came from a coalition of Georgia angels and venture capital investors, who examined similar programs in other states (notably InvestSC and TNinvestco). You can read the complete text of the Georgia bill as drafted here. I’ve plowed through the seventeen pages of legalese to you don’t have to. Here’s what you need to know.

Invest Georgia Program

HB 718 creates the Invest Georgia program to invest in seed, early, and growth stage companies in order to create Georgia jobs, create wealth within Georgia, commercialize R&D at Georgia’s universities, and promote the economic development of Georgia. (The name in the bill is the Georgia Capital Acceleration program, but that will change.)

A new Invest Georgia Authority (IGA) will consist of five members: three appointed by the Governor, one by the Lieutenant Governor, and one by the Speaker of the House of Representatives. Each member must have experience as a venture investor, fund-of-funds manager, or as an entrepreneur. Members serve without compensation and cannot be affiliated in any way with a fund receiving investments.

The Money

The state of Georgia will sell up to $200 million insurance premium tax credits, with the proceeds going to the new Invest Georgia Fund (IGF). This is a mechanism that has been proven in other states; credits against future premium taxes usually sell for about 85¢ on the dollar, which would nominally deliver $170 million in cash to the IGF (in equal thirds over three years, starting in June 2013). The proceeds will be invested in Georgia-based funds who are investing in Georgia-based businesses.

Administration

Through a transparent open-bid process, IGA will appoint a third-party “program administrator” that will evaluate and select Georgia-based venture capital funds. There are many respected third-parties who specialize in such assistance for other states and other institutional investors. Some of the more well known are Hamilton Lane, LP Advisors, Cambridge Associates, and many others.

Once appointed, the program administrator will conduct a separate transparent open-bid process for funds seeking investment of IGF monies, starting in September 2012. Applicant funds must have a history of investing in Georgia and/or commit to a permanent presence or affiliation in Georgia.

The Recipient Funds

The program administrator will recommend investments in funds that meet the state’s criteria and which cover a broad range of sectors that traditionally are good targets for venture capital and are important to Georgia’s economy, including technology, health care, life sciences, agribusiness, logistics, energy, and advanced manufacturing. (Retail, real estate, venue-based entertainment, financial services, mining, and professional services are specifically excluded.) Final fund selections — but not individual company investments — are approved by the IGA board.

IGF investments into the funds will be made over three years, coinciding with the sale of the tax credits. The allocation will be balanced between:

• 30% into early-stage venture capital funds, including first-time funds. IGF can account for up to 90% of the capital in such a fund, with the remainder coming from the principals and other investors. “Seed” or “early-stage” companies must have fewer than 20 employees and revenues of less than $1 million. Early-stage allocations will be between $10 million and $15 million per fund.
• 70% into growth-stage venture capital funds, where IGF can account for up of 50% of the capital in such a fund. “Growth-stage” companies must have fewer than 100 employees, but revenues of greater than $1 million. Growth-stage allocations will be at least $10 million per fund, with the cap to be determined by the IGA.

Any company receiving investment from IGF monies must be located in Georgia; if it leaves Georgia within three years, the investment must be returned.

Recipient funds will collect an industry-standard management fee and other fees (primarily legal and accounting, but specifically not to include lobbying or governmental relations).

Financial Soundness and Transparency

Investments in companies that are successfully acquired (M&A) or go public (IPO) will return capital to the IGF until it recovers 100% of its committed capital. Afterwards, the IGF and any fund returning capital will split returns: 80% to the state, 20% to the fund. This is a standard venture capital limited partnership arrangement.

Every year, each recipient fund will file a report with the Governor and legislative leaders detailing company names, amounts, and performance of qualified investments; number of Georgia employees and their average wages; and other information required by IGA to determine the fund’s contribution to the economic development of Georgia. This report will be published on a publicly-available website (after removing any proprietary or company-confidential information).

Note that this is not a CAPCO (Certified Capital Company) program such as those adopted (and regretted) by many states. You can read more about CAPCOs in the AJC here, and here, and here, and here.

My standard disclaimer applies. Also note that I am not a lawyer and I don’t play one on television. Any errors in representation above are my fault, and you should read the entire bill before making any decisions as to whether you support it. And, of course, bills in the Georgia Legislature sometimes change substantially between first reading and final passage, even if the bill number stays the same!

But what are you going to photograph? A few months ago, we started the painful task of sorting through tens of thousands of slides and prints and Polaroids saved by my Mom and Dad. We’re not talking a couple of shoeboxes… we’re talking six footlockers of photographs. Way too much to work through in a single sitting or a single weekend, but I’m slowly separating out the ones to be scanned and cataloged versus the ones to just be deleted.

One of the things I’ve discovered is that the only photographs I’m saving are the ones with people in them. I don’t care how good your shot of the Eiffel Tower is, I can find a better one on Flickr. I don’t care how good your shot of a sunset is, National Geographic has a better one. But Flickr doesn’t help me find photos of my family and friends and people we’ve met in our travels. So those are the ones that I’m saving and scanning.

A couple of more lessons learned:

• Polaroids fade. Badly. If you have a box full of your father’s Polaroids, they’re not going to get any better than they are right now.
• Metadata is important. Just a few pencilled scribbles on the back (name, date, location) make a huge difference. If you have someone in your life who is getting older, sitting them down in front of thousands of photos is just too intimidating. So do it in steps:
   
  1. First, sort through and extract the best photos that include people.
  2. Take another pass. Be ruthless in whittling this stack down to manageable proportions.
  3. Then show just that subset to your loved one, and note the names of the people you don’t recognize.

  I wish we’d done that when Mom and Dad were still with us.

• As you can see from the photo of my Dad taken 60 years ago, I inherited my innate sense of style from him. Sorry, Mom!

Below is a necessarily-incomplete list of EI² accomplishments from 2011:

• The Georgia Manufacturing Extension Partnership (GaMEP) staff received two national MEP awards: one for innovation and one for service. We also hosted the first national Advanced Manufacturing Partnership event (at the request of the White House) and our first Next Generation Manufacturing conference. We piloted the Department of Energy’s Superior Energy Performance program and helped lead the adoption of ISO 50001 Standard for Energy Management.
• Our MBDA Business Center (MBC) won a five-year cooperative agreement totaling more than $2.4 million and was recognized as one of the region’s outstanding performing centers for 2011. The Georgia Tech Procurement Assistance Center (GTPAC) helped 4,116 Georgia businesses win $639 million in government contracts. As one of our revenue diversification programs, we also launched the Contracting Education Academy at Georgia Tech, with seven courses approved by the Defense Acquisition University.
• The Alternative Media Access Center (AMAC) helped Board of Regents institutions save more than $4.4 million in learning materials for 9000 visually-impaired students in Georgia. Late in the year, Governor Nathan Deal transferred Tools for Life, Georgia’s Assistive Technology Act Federal Program, from the Georgia Department of Labor to AMAC. Tools for Life offers options for greater freedom by increasing access to and acquisition of assistive technology devices and services for Georgians of all ages and disabilities so they can live, learn, work, and play independently in communities of their choice. We expect this new program to bring more than $1.2 million in annual funding to EI².
• Through our Strategic Partners Office, we managed Georgia Tech relationships with 243 companies and interacted with 202 faculty members, resulting in $4.1 million of sponsored research to Georgia Tech. At the same time, we participated in 18 economic development projects resulting in 1,594 new jobs in Georgia from company relocation and $63 million in new capital investment.
• Our Innovation Partners group won new business in tourism (TRAC), and in foreign direct investment and exporting. We also played a key part in steering the new Huron Consulting study of the economic impact of Georgia Tech, which will be shared with key decision makers in the government and business communities in early 2012.
• ATDC grew to more than 500 member companies, making it arguably the largest business incubator in the world. In 2011, we announced a new tier of “ATDC Select” for more personalized coaching and connection building. VentureLab launched 16 spinout companies based on Georgia Tech intellectual property. VentureLab graduates raised more than $100 million in venture capital last year. At the same time, we helped launch Flashpoint, a new business accelerator that’s getting great reviews and helping small teams evaluate and build scalable business models for their startups.
• As anticipated, much of our growth was in the area of health information technology (IT). Health@EI² enrolled 889 eligible Georgia healthcare providers, for a contract value of more than $2 million. And we won a Georgia Department of Community Health award for more than $1.7 million for our work in health IT.
• Perhaps most satisfyingly, we won an intense national competition for one of 20 U.S. Jobs and Innovation Accelerator Challenge awards from the Small Business Administration, Economic Development Administration, and the Department of Labor, with a value of more than $1.6 million. Within EI², the winning proposal was an internal collaboration between Health@EI², Innovation Partners, Strategic Partners, and Industry Services. We also drew in other Georgia Tech units (Institute for People and Technology and the Georgia Tech Research Institute), and even Gwinnett Technical College.
• The Global Center for Medical Innovation (GCMI) won a pair of Economic Development Administration grants plus matching money from the Georgia Research Alliance to initiate construction of its medical device prototype development center, which will be completed in April of this year. The center also added its first permanent professional staffers, and Emory agreed to join as a full member in the consortium (along with Piedmont Hospital and the Georgia Research Alliance).
• Our commercial real estate remains 100 percent occupied; in fact, our space in Centergy is probably the only commercial real estate in Atlanta with a waiting list! John Toon won Georgia Tech’s staff communicator of the year award; personally, I think he and his team earn that every year. And our support staff have been fully occupied bringing on board dozens of new full-time and part-time employees across the state, even through the budget downturn. (They’re funded by non-state dollars.)

There’s a lot going on! I appreciate your hard work and the great results you achieved in 2011. I hope everyone had a restful holiday, because we’re going to need it. 2012 is going to be a great year!

Stephen

Received in email, and too good not to post here in its entirety…

Checking out at the store, the young cashier suggested to the older woman, that she should bring her own grocery bags because plastic bags weren’t good for the environment.

The woman apologized and explained, “We didn’t have this green thing back in my earlier days.”

The clerk responded, “That’s our problem today. Your generation did not care enough to save our environment for future generations.”

She was right — our generation didn’t have the green thing in its day.

Back then, we returned milk bottles, soda bottles, and beer bottles to the store. The store sent them back to the plant to be washed and sterilized and refilled, so it could use the same bottles over and over. So they really were recycled. But we didn’t have the green thing back in our day.

We walked up stairs, because we didn’t have an escalator in every store and office building. We walked to the grocery store and didn’t climb into a 300-horsepower machine every time we had to go two blocks. But she was right. We didn’t have the green thing in our day.

Back then, we washed the baby’s diapers because we didn’t have the throw-away kind. We dried clothes on a line, not in an energy gobbling machine burning up 220 volts — wind and solar power really did dry our clothes back in our early days. Kids got hand-me-down clothes from their brothers or sisters, not always brand-new clothing. But that young lady is right; we didn’t have the green thing back in our day.

Back then, we had one TV, or radio, in the house — not a TV in every room. And the TV had a small screen the size of a handkerchief (remember them?), not a screen the size of the state of Montana . In the kitchen, we blended and stirred by hand because we didn’t have electric machines to do everything for us. When we packaged a fragile item to send in the mail, we used wadded up old newspapers to cushion it, not Styrofoam or plastic bubble wrap. Back then, we didn’t fire up an engine and burn gasoline just to cut the lawn. We used a push mower that ran on human power. We exercised by working so we didn’t need to go to a health club to run on treadmills that operate on electricity. But she’s right; we didn’t have the green thing back then.

We drank from a fountain when we were thirsty instead of using a cup or a plastic bottle every time we had a drink of water. We refilled writing pens with ink instead of buying a new pen, and we replaced the razor blades in a razor instead of throwing away the whole razor just because the blade got dull. But we didn’t have the green thing back then.

Back then, people took the streetcar or a bus and kids rode their bikes to school or walked instead of turning their moms into a 24-hour taxi service. We had one electrical outlet in a room, not an entire bank of sockets to power a dozen appliances. And we didn’t need a computerized gadget to receive a signal beamed from satellites 12,000 miles out in space in order to find the nearest pizza joint.

But isn’t it sad the current generation laments how wasteful we old folks were just because we didn’t have the green thing back then?

Please forward this on to another selfish old person who needs a lesson in conservation from a smart-ass young person.

There’s amazing footage of storms off Cape Horn, as well as less stressful footage of daily life on board one of the last commercial sailing ships: no engines, no electricity, no hydraulics, no GPS, no radio (except, probably, a short range Morse-code rig). Oil lamps and a hand-cranked foghorn. Over an acre of sails were controlled by a crew of dozens of young men swarming up and down her four masts, up to 170 feet above the sea. Four hours on, four hours off, for a hundred days. Lousy food and worse sanitation.

All this within living memory. Of course, my first reaction was admiration for the strength and endurance of the crew. But then I began to think about all the skills required by the underlying technology base that permitted three dozen men to transport three tons of cargo around the world using wind, muscle power, and ingenuity. How almost every item and every task on board would have been instantly familiar to Lord Nelson after Trafalgar in 1805.

And about how all of those skills have been lost within one human lifetime.

I’m exaggerating. I suppose the skills aren’t really “lost.” There are plenty of books, and journals, and even courses on the Age of Sail. But these are intellectual curiosities. We no longer have an industrial base whereby thousands of sailors, and tens of thousands of at-shore workers, rely on commercial sailing ships. So, of course, as far as the job market is concerned, the skills have been lost.

It’s true in every field. No one other than historical re-enactors knows how to make a buggy whip. Or a suit of armor. Or a flint knife. Heck, just ask any office worker of a certain age for a sheet of carbon paper! (My mom typed the board minutes of the Trust Company of Georgia, now SunTrust, every month. Twelve copies, eleven sheets of carbon paper. As you can imagine, she learned to type very accurately without touching the backspace key!)

Those aren’t commercially-useful skills anymore. So we don’t learn them, and we don’t teach them.

What do we teach? Look at the last resume that crossed your desk. It probably has a line saying something like “Proficient in Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.” You can get a degree from Harvard with your sole “quantitative reasoning” class being “Practical Math,” which appears to be a review of basic arithmetic plus tips for using Microsoft Excel.

Does anyone really believe that Microsoft Excel will be a core skill set in forty years? Twenty years? It’d be like telling the first mate on a modern merchant marine ship that you know how to repair a canvas sail by hand.

But, like sailing a barque around Cape Horn by hand, what have we lost? I used to know how to do basic car maintenance. Changed my own oil. Changed fan belts. Changed plugs, points, and condensers. This isn’t special; probably every American male born in the Fifties and early Sixties learned the same. Now, I open the hood of a modern automobile and am baffled by the complexity. So I take it to the dealer, who has $15,000 worth of computer equipment to diagnose its ills. We’re probably not far from the day when, like your iPhone, your car requires special tools just to open the hood.

I’m pretty much the opposite of a Luddite. I think that, in general, new technology makes our lives better… and that when technology has unpleasant consequences (like pollution), the answer is usually more technology, not less. But watching this video, my mind filled in a Jimmy Buffett soundtrack… “Watched the men who rode you switch from sails to steam.” And I wonder if we’ve lost something worth keeping?

Car and Driver is the latest enthusiast rag to hop onto the hydrogen bandwagon with their article “What the H?” in this month’s issue. I wrote this letter to the editor but, since I doubt it will be printed, I’m reproducing it here.

Editors,

I’m sorry to see that you’ve bought into the hydrogen hype (“What the H”, Jan 2012). Hydrogen fuel cells make for nice demonstration projects, but will never be a meaningful part of the national transportation infrastructure.

Why? First, there are no hydrogen wells. You have to create it, whether from water electrolysis, biomass gasification, or natural gas reformation. According to the Second Law of Thermodynamics, that’s always going to take significantly more energy than you get out of burning it in a fuel cell. In this sense, hydrogen is just a bulky, expensive, and occasionally-dangerous battery.

Second, hydrogen is incredibly hard to work with. It can’t be transported or stored easily. Standard tools, fittings, tanks, and materials become brittle or leaky. Yes, aerospace companies have solved these problems for rocket engines, but not with parts you can buy at Pep Boys.

Finally, hydrogen is the opposite of dense. Whether as a liquid or a pressurized gas, a hydrogen tank contains only a fraction of the potential energy represented by an equal-size tank filled with liquid hydrocarbons. That’s a fundamental physical limit, and can’t be improved by smart engineering.

If you want to burn hydrogen in your car, the best way is to attach your hydrogen atoms to carbon atoms… and make gasoline.

Thanks for the otherwise-great issue!

Stephen

They spent one week on-site working with ECE’s Dr. Kim, Dr. Al-Regib, and Dr. Hayes preparing a commercialization plan for the proposal.  The concept was to develop the next generation in-home media convergence device.  Its design and functionality reaches beyond AppleTV, GoogleTV, Boxee, and many other recent Internet-based television solutions.

After further work back in Atlanta, the team submitted the proposal to the Korean government for consideration.  With help from Carl Rust and Dr. McLaughlin, our $9 million proposal was selected as first out of 109 submissions — a major accomplishment.  Since March of 2009 the “KORUS” (Korea US) research team, along with research and corporate partners in Korea have been developing the device.  David, Carl, and James have been supporting the team through gathering competitive intelligence, preparing market forecasts, and coordinating partner integration.  This effort led to the visitation and temporary assignment of many Korean faculty, government officials, and government laboratory researchers to our campus.

Signing ceremony at Centergy with Dr. Yeongcheol Seok, Vice President, Korea Institute for Advancement of Technology; Dr. Steve McLaughlin, Vice President of International Initiatives, Georgia Tech;
and Carl Rust, GT EI2; 3 May 2011

Building on this relationship with the Korean government, in 2009, Dr. McLaughlin began developing a MKE/KIAT (Ministry of Knowledge Economy /Korea Institute for Advancement of Technology) activity called Global Industry-Academia Cooperation or R&BD Hub (Research & Business Development Hub).

Under this effort, MKE/KIAT are sponsoring  Georgia Tech to perform research and commercialization collaboration with small- and medium-sized companies from Korea.  The goal is to jointly perform pioneering research leading to new products for US markets.  Successful projects are expected to have a local economic impact by growing their operation in Georgia to support the new business which may include some combination of sales, marketing, support, distribution, and manufacturing functions.

Georgia Tech’s reputation as a prominent research university combined with ATDC (Advanced Technology Development Center), our highly-recognized startup company incubator, uniquely qualified us for this program.  MKE and KIAT have committed $2.5 million so far, with more expected in future years.  Carl Rust and his organization within EI2 are involved in assisting with the management of this effort.

In late 2009, David Bridges and Carl Rust began developing a concept named “Global Startup Business Program in US” with the Korean government agency SBC (Small and Medium Business Corporation). The program has both entrepreneur and incubator elements.  This $1.8 million proposal is intended to provide young Korean entrepreneurs an international education and hands-on training experience so they have a higher probability of success in launching their technology based new business targeting US markets.  Those that are successful are expected to form a startup company and become part of ATDC.  A unique part of the proposal is the notion of bringing over entrepreneurs in a cohort of 10 to 15 companies.  To our knowledge, this international cohort landing concept has never been attempted.    Our success with KORUS and the MKE/KIAT hub has led to this opportunity with SBC. The Korean government is scheduled to make a decision in January 2012.

Dr. McLaughlin, Georgia Tech’s vice provost for international initiatives, has on at least two occasions described this long-term relationship with the Korean government as an archetype for GT’s future collaborations with other countries.  The initiatives bring foreign governments, enterprises, and economic development opportunities to Georgia.  As of now, Centergy is home to the KORUS team, the R&BD Hub teams, and hopefully the new cohort SBC teams.

So if you think you’re seeing more Korean faces in the Centergy courtyard, now you know why! Make them feel welcome.

Stephen

I prepared the following document as my testimony to the State Science and Technology Strategic Plan Joint Study Commission, meeting in Columbus on 30 November 2011. It’s going to be available on their website, but I decided to replicate it here.

Supporting Technology Entrepreneurs in Georgia

Stephen Fleming
Vice President, Enterprise Innovation Institute
Georgia Institute of Technology

http://innovate.gatech.edu

I.               Background/Company Overview

The Georgia Institute of Technology is one of the nation’s top research universities, distinguished by its commitment to improving the human condition through advanced science and technology. Georgia Tech’s campus occupies 400 acres in the heart of Atlanta, where 20,000 undergraduate and graduate students receive a focused, technologically based education. Georgia Tech is consistently ranked in U.S. News & World Report’s top ten public universities in the United States and has been ranked as #4 among all engineering schools (public and private) for the last six years.

The Enterprise Innovation Institute is Georgia Tech’s primary business outreach organization, and provides a comprehensive program of assistance to business, industry, entrepreneurs, and economic developers. Our goal is to help enterprises of all kinds apply science, technology, and innovation to improve their bottom lines. Specifically for entrepreneurs, our programs include:

• ATDC: The Advanced Technology Development Center is the oldest, largest, and most successful university-based business incubator in the country. Since 1980, ATDC has helped hundreds of Georgia entrepreneurs create great technology companies, and currently has over 500 member companies. Recently, it was honored as one of the ten best incubators in the world by Forbes magazine.
• VentureLab: In cooperation with the Georgia Research Alliance, Georgia Tech’s VentureLab helps launch over a dozen startup companies a year based on Georgia Tech research.
• Flashpoint: An innovative new entrepreneurial accelerator, combining shared learning, mentorship, and cutting-edge approaches to business model generation and startup creation.
• GCMI: The Global Center for Medical Innovation helps physicians and other medical professionals commercialize their inventions with a process based on the successful VentureLab model and a dedicated medical device prototyping facility.

The Enterprise Innovation Institute manages the Georgia Seed Capital Fund, which leverages private-sector investments into technology startups. This fund has not received any state appropriations in several years. EI2 also houses the Georgia SBIR Assistance Program, which has been drastically downsized due to the economic recession and the resulting reductions in the Board of Regents “B” budget in recent years.

II.              Please address the following points:

a.   What policies are currently in place that are barriers to your company/organization’s success?

The prohibition against investing state pension assets into venture capital firms has had a negative impact on local venture funds’ ability to raise capital. Although relaxing this prohibition will not have an immediate “silver bullet” effect, it should be done both for fiduciary and for economic development reasons.

b.   What policies have aided in your company/organization’s success?

The state’s annual appropriation to the Enterprise Innovation Institute (through the Board of Regents “B” budget) is the basis for all of our entrepreneurial assistance programs as well as our other business-support services in 25 locations throughout the state. Due to the economic recession and the resulting reductions in the “B” budget, our appropriations have been cut approximately 30% over the last four years. We have maintained our focus and continue to be recognized as one of the best entrepreneurial programs in the country and as the hub of much of the technology entrepreneurship in Georgia. As tax revenues recover, it’s important to bring the “B” budget back in line with previous funding levels.

In addition, the state’s support of the Georgia Research Alliance has brought dozens of superb scholars to our state, and many of them have launched entrepreneurial startups. Georgia Tech averages over a dozen spinout companies per year; most of these have benefited greatly from the GRA commercialization grant program.

Finally, the recent angel tax credit appears to be stimulating private-sector investment by individuals into Georgia technology startups. This should be monitored and, if justified, extended in future years.

c.   Where do you want to see your company/organization in ten years?

Currently, American business leaders think of Silicon Valley, Boston, Seattle, and Austin as the centers of technology entrepreneurship in this country. In ten years, I want Atlanta to be on that list.

d.   How can the state of Georgia help your company/organization realize this goal?

Please see policy recommendations below.

III.         Please include a short bio and your company/organization’s background.

Stephen Fleming has over 15 years of private equity experience at the General Partner level. Prior to his venture capital career, he spent 15 years in operations roles at AT&T Bell Laboratories, Nortel Networks, and LICOM (a venture-funded startup).

An Atlanta native and summa cum laude graduate of Georgia Tech, Stephen returned to his alma mater in mid-2005 as Chief Commercialization Officer. In 2009, he was promoted to Vice President, Economic Development and Technology Ventures, and Executive Director of the Enterprise Innovation Institute at Georgia Tech.

In addition to his roles at Georgia Tech, he is also a member of the Investment Committee of the Seraph Group, an early-stage venture capital firm. Stephen is active in the “alternative space” industry; he is an investor in three private aerospace companies and is a founding member of the Space Angels Network. Mr. Fleming also serves on the boards of the Technology Association of Georgia, the Spiritual Living Center of Atlanta, and Tech High School, a charter high school emphasizing science, math, and technology in urban Atlanta.

Georgia Tech’s Enterprise Innovation Institute (EI2) helps enterprises of all kinds improve their competitiveness through the application of science, technology, and innovation. During fiscal year 2010, the Enterprise Innovation Institute:

• Helped Georgia manufacturing companies reduce operating costs by $35 million, increase sales by $243 million, and create or save 1,350 jobs. EI2 served 710 manufacturers during the year.
• Evaluated 125 Georgia Tech research innovations and formed 16 new companies based on this intellectual property. Startups based on Georgia Tech innovations attracted $60.5 million in investment.
• Worked with 235 companies interested in collaborations with Georgia Tech, including 17 projects involving state economic development agencies. Projects resulting from those interactions generated 3,693 new jobs and produced $547 million in capital investment.
• Helped Georgia companies win $560 million in government contracts, creating an estimated 11,505 jobs.
• Assisted 71 minority entrepreneurs, who received $31.5 million worth of new contracts, sales increases, and financing.
• Served more than 250 technology startup companies that together generated capital activity (venture capital investment and mergers/acquisitions) of more than $157 million. Companies affiliated with the ATDC program reported revenues totaling more than $1 billion and nearly 3,500 jobs.
• Helped Georgia companies prepare 58 applications for Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grants. Companies assisted won nearly $7 million in awards.