Andrew Hargadon

UC Davis Green Technology Entrepreneurship Academy July 6-10

UC Davis Green Technology Entrepreneurship Academy July 6-10 Draws International Researchers
Scientists Learn Lab-to-Market Paths to Make World a Better Place

(DAVIS, CA) – The Center for Entrepreneurship at the University of California, Davis, announced today that 45 students from around the world have been selected to attend the third annual Green Technology Entrepreneurship Academy to be held July 6–10 in Incline Village, Nev.

The Academy is taught by experts from top venture capital firms, law firms and research institutions and gives attendees the knowledge and skills they need to commercialize their research.

The participants—graduate students, post-doctoral researchers and faculty from a wide range of science and engineering fields—represent 20 U.S. and international universities. They will bring a wealth of knowledge about cutting-edge, sustainable and environmentally technologies.

“The Green Technology Entrepreneurship Academy is focused on enabling the best science and technology, developed in our universities and national laboratories, to drive the next generation of innovative solutions in the marketplace,” said Andrew Hargadon, faculty director of the Center for Entrepreneurship and an associate professor at the UC Davis Graduate School of Management.

“The diverse student body at this year’s Academy will bring a fresh batch of ideas to the table, and will leave armed with the tools they need to propel their ideas forward.”

The five-day program covers the basics of entrepreneurship with sessions on intellectual property, elevator pitches, development strategies, market validation, business presentations, team building and establishing an organization.

The program also includes networking and mentoring sessions with venture capitalists, attorneys and research scientists on the Academy’s faculty. Serial entrepreneurs also share their experiences launching new ventures.

During the week, Academy participants work in teams to prepare a business concept. Each group’s work will culminate with a presentation to a panel of faculty members.

The Academy’s faculty includes venture capitalists from American River Ventures, CalCEF Clean Energy Angel Fund, DFJ Element, DFJ Frontier, Intel Corporate Ventures, Nth Power, Physic Ventures and Sierra Angels; attorneys from Morrison and Foerster, and Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP; and representatives from Southern California Edison and Sempra Utilities.

Peter Santangeli, founder of Greenbox Technology and head of the company’s engineering division, will be the keynote speaker at a networking dinner on July 8. Santangeli is the former vice president of engineering at Macromedia, where he led development of the company’s Flash Media Server and Breeze Web conferencing solutions. Greenbox is creating an interactive energy management platform that enables households to save money and reduce their carbon footprint.

The Academy’s founding sponsor is the Kauffman Foundation. Major sponsors include Chevron, Pacific Gas and Electric and Sempra Energy Foundation. Additional sponsorship is provided by Mariah Power and the Nevada Institute for Renewable Energy Commercialization.

The Academy is held at the Tahoe Center for Environmental Sciences, a UC Davis-affiliated, state-of-the-art research facility built using best practices in green construction.

For more details about the Green Technology Entrepreneurship Academy:
http://entrepreneurship.ucdavis.edu/green

About the UC Davis Center for Entrepreneurship

The UC Davis Center for Entrepreneurship, a Center of Excellence at the Graduate School of Management, is dedicated to promoting entrepreneurship and innovation through educational programs that bridge science, engineering, and business. Under the faculty direction of Andrew Hargadon, the center provides gives MBA students, science and engineering researchers the skills, knowledge and tools they need move ideas out of the lab and into the world, where their solutions can directly address broader global issues. Whether for profit or for social benefit—or both—the center’s programs enable students to envision a better world and make it a reality.

http://entrepreneurship.ucdavis.edu

Media Contact:

Nicole Starsinic
Associate Director
UC Davis Center for Entrepreneurship
nstarsinic@ucdavis.edu
(530) 574-6531

Another Entrepreneur's story

Giacomo 'Peldi' Guilizzoni is the Founder of Balsamiq and tells a wonderful tale of the motivation for and launching of his company.  37Signals has a nice interview with him here.  Balsamiq enables rapid and collaborative prototyping of user interfaces for applications.  Peldi's story clearly shapes his company and blog, which makes it all the more enjoyable.

And it's a story that illustrates how close at hand is the entrepreneurial option, which makes it all the more applicable.  I like particularly Peldi's explanation for why he decided to leave Adobe to start his own company: "What's Your Story"

On a related note, his passion shows through not for the new technologies but rather for the ways in which those technologies are changing how people (his customers) work:

Call it Web Office, Enterprise 2.0, Work 2.0, this stuff is powerful.. It’s a new way to work and it makes everyone more productive and the resulting work is better, which I believe impacts the bottom line directly as well as everyone’s morale. I truly believe that we’re in front of one of those “no going back” techonologies like broadband, cell-phones, clothes dryers, etc. 

My brother, Steve Hargadon, works in and writes about the latent revolution in computing in schools--why kids take a 30-year step back in technological time when they set foot on K-12 campuses, and what happens when someone changes that situation.  It's the same passion, and doing something about it is now within reach of so many others who, like Peldi, decide to make the leap. 

Green Technology Entrepreneurship Academy 2009

Green Technology Entrepreneurship Academy

July 6 - 10, 2009 in Incline Village, Nevada
Tahoe Center for Environmental Science

The Green Technology Entrepreneurship Academy (GTEA) provides science and engineering faculty, post-doctoral researchers and graduate students with the necessary knowledge and skills to move environmentally sustainable and green technology research out of the laboratory and into the world.

The one-week academy will be held July 6 - 10, 2009 at the Tahoe Center for Environmental Sciences located at Sierra Nevada College in Incline Village, Nevada. Participants spend a week learning how to recognize, develop, and bring to market new ventures built on their sustainable technology research, in collaboration with some of the best investors, entrepreneurs, faculty, and industry executives from across the country.

Visit the Green Technology Entrepreneurship Academy website for more information.

Apply by May 15, 2009

Apply online >>

Accepted participants receive fellowships to cover room, board and tuition for the week.

Faster, Better, Cheaper... choose better

Hard to believe that a few years ago, we were marveling at the power that web2.0 was giving us to publish our own content.  Now we're overwhelmed--at least I am--by not by the task of making sense of so much new content, but also the task of generating original content with any meaning or value to distinguish it from everything else.  Our posts, to paraphrase Roy Batty, are "like tears in rain."

Merlin Mann, of 43 Folders, captures this sentiment wonderfully with his post/essay Better:

What worries me are the consequences of a diet comprised mostly of fake-connectedness, makebelieve insight, and unedited first drafts of everything. I think it’s making us small. I know that whenever I become aware of it, I realize how small it can make me. So, I’ve come to despise it.

With this diet metaphor in mind, I want to, if you like, start eating better. But, I also want to start growing a tastier tomato — regardless of how easy it is to pick, package, ship, or vend. The tomato is the story, my friend.

This doesn’t mean I’ll be liveblogging a lot of ham-fisted attempts to turn “everything” off. But it does mean making mindful decisions about the quality of any input that I check repeatedly — as well as any “stuff” I produce. Everything. From news sources to entertainment programming, and from ephemeral web content down to each email message I decide to respond to. The shit has to go, inclusive.

Personally, I have no idea how to cope with the downpour of information and insights and I suspect few others do either.  Which is why I really appreciated Mann's recognition that, while there is no standard response, we each in our own way need to learn how to "start eating better" and, equally, fighting the urge for putting out faster and cheaper insights when the nutritional value all comes from the better.

Great video on collabeeration

a great video on rapid prototyping and collaboration from Paul Hudnut, BOPreneur extraordinaire, as well as board member at New Belgium Brewing Co...one of the coolest jobs.

Lies, damn lies, and statistics

Mark Twain said it best.  Statistics has become the weapon of choice these days in everything from science to stimulus (plans, that is).  Maybe because it is one of the most versatile of weapons.  You choose the data, you choose the methods of analysis, and you make claims about how doing things one way is "significantly" different than doing things another way. 

Significance here being the cutting edge of the weapon, by way of its double meaning. For statisticians, a (statistically) significant difference can be (relatively) insignificant because no matter how small the difference, the (statistical) significance is an internal measure related to differences within the data and unrelated to its importance on the outside.  Except, of course, that it allows one to claim they have found a significant difference.     

Two unrelated articles came my way this morning. The first is a recent study by MIT neuroscientist Edward Vul, who:

...analyzed 54 prominent studies that used functional magnetic resonance imaging, or fMRI, to identify the brain areas associated with specific emotions — and found that 28 of them used the statistical methods and filters that were most likely to yield data that would confirm the researchers’ hypotheses. According to Vul, this cherrypicking may have been inadvertent; nevertheless, it produced correlations that “exceed what is statistically possible” and are almost certainly false. (from VSL)

Just when your faith in science was lost, along comes a second article, in the NYT sports section, of all places, that restores it with one of the most interesting and (statistically and personally) significant non-findings I've seen in a long time.

It turns out that the average free-throw percentage in college and professional basketball has remained essentially unchanged for the last 50 years (Free Throws).  While every other sports statistic has fallen, this measure of performance has shown itself resistant to shoes, shoe contracts, performance enhancers, the hem length of shorts, ESPN, tattoos, and television contracts:

Basketball in the United States has changed in myriad ways over the decades, from flat-footed set shots to dunks, from crotch-hugging uniforms to baggy knee-length shorts, from the dominance of American players to the recent infusion of international stars.

But one thing has remained remarkably constant: the rate at which players make free throws.

It's nice to know the more things (significantly) change, the more they stay (significantly) the same.

Prototypes R us

National Instruments plays a quiet but critical role in the transformation of ideas into innovations.  Ideas and innovation are often confused--most popular and research attention goes to telling stories of how great ideas come into being.  But there's a big difference between an idea and its successful implementation somewhere.  anywhere.  And that difference is often measured in decades and millions.  Ideas are about what could be done, innovation is about getting it done.

Through the Entrepreneurship Academies, I get to see a lot of science and engineering talent developing some of the latest and greatest ideas using the, yes, latest and greatest in monitoring and controls technologies.  New ideas about real-time monitoring of carbon output in smoke stacks, mad-cow disease in slaughterhouses, mastistis in dairies, oil content in algae, tumor cells in surgery, and arsenic in drinking water, to name a very few.    The ideas are remarkable and at the academy we work with the researchers to understand how they can remain remarkable as they become businesses and enter the market: moving from what could be done to getting it done.

One of the central challenges facing researchers is transforming their benchtop ideas (usually one-offs) into alpha and beta prototypes that can be used in the field in trials--particularly as test and measurement equipment is expensive, cumbersome, and general purpose.

That's where National Instruments (NI) comes in.  I've been working and talking with them for a number of years now and the more I spend time with them the more I want to give up my day job and become one of their customers.  NI has built an incredibly strong business and even stronger community focused on making it possible for researchers to turn their ideas into reality, one step at a time.  They got started by connecting your PC (actually, it was a Mac, bless their hearts) to laboratory instruments.  Over time, they got better and better at that and, more recently, began to focus on the migration of ideas from laboratory experiments to actual production.  They've built a series of chipsets and systems that support migrating an idea from 1 unit to 10 to 100 to 1000's. 

Anyway, they've become to prototyping in hard-core science and engineering what foam core and the glue gun are to prototyping in design school.  And most recently, John Hanks, vice president of product marketing for data acquisition and industrial control, posted on their rules for prototyping (summarized here):

1 Recognize That Ideas Are Cheap.

2 Start with a Paper Design.

3 Put in Just Enough Work.

4 Anticipate for Multiple Options.

5 Design for Reuse in the Final Product.

6 Avoid Focusing on Cost Too Early.

7 Fight “Reversion to the Mean.”

8 Ensure You Can Demonstrate Your Prototype.

Thinking about networks

 

A great post by my brother, Steve Hargadon, describes the challenges facing anyone trying to create, or re-create, a new business: Long-handled Spoons. The story, excerpted here, goes as follows:

A Rabbi asks to see Heaven and Hell. His wish is granted and he's taken to a room where everyone is seated at a long dinner table with delicious food in front of them.  However, everyone there is starving and emaciated.  This is because, the Rabbi discovers, while each has a long spoon strapped to his or her wrist, the spoon is so long they cannot pick up the food and actually put it in their mouths. They are utterly frustrated and bitterly unhappy. The Rabbi is told that this is Hell. 

He is then taken to another room with everyone seated at an identical long table with delicious food, and each individual also has a long spoon strapped to his or her wrist.  These people, however, are well-fed, for they have learned that their spoons are perfectly designed to allow them to feed each other, which they are doing quite naturally.  They are joyous, happy, and contented.  The Rabbi is told that this is Heaven.

Steve uses it to discuss web 2.0 and the difficulties that the traditional business mindset has in wrapping itself around true collaboration. In a more obtuse way, I posted earlier about my fear that Apple saw the need to connect our digital networks, but is falling short of enabling a truly open experience because of their insistence on being the hub of a network that will, ultimately, have no hub.  Our posts seem to be two views of the same problem (what would you expect from two brothers?). 

The lack of collaboration is not new but the internet has made the problem all the more obvious and acute.  While some people hold on to their proprietary offerings, collaborators are growing like weeds around them.  This is all obvious, but what I find fascinating, and what the lesson of the long spoon is getting at, brings us down from the level of technological trends, web2.0 evangelism, and social networks and into the challenge of changing the way people think and act.

How do people conceive of new ventures that are networked at their core?  Meaning new businesses that are originally designed for, and evolve around, collaboration as the primary way in which value is created and delivered.  Forget the long-tail--this is the challenge of the long spoon.

As importantly, how do people living in organizations designed to profit from proprietary products and services allow aspects of their business to experiment with and evolve into more open and collaborative business models?  Can large organizations change the way they treat suppliers, competitors, and potential partners fast enough to evolve with emerging markets?  I've know companies that can't get an NDA through legal in under 6 weeks--how are they going to explore and experiment with partnering in these conditions?

Reconciling design and PR in the big three...

Bob Lutz, vice-chairman of global product development at GM, announced his retirement at the end of this year (Losing Lutz).  His stated reasons give some insight into the mindset at the top of the big three American car companies about the role of design, and public relations, in developing and selling cars (and themselves) to the American public:

...a bigger tipping point for Lutz was the government's increasingly hands-on role in how cars will be made. Lutz said he was looking ahead at engineering and designing new cars to meet tougher government-mandated fuel economy rules rather than strictly to spark passion among car buyers—and thought it would be a good time to start moving out. "What I have proven to be best at is the psychological and emotional end of the business, designing what people want," Lutz said in an interview. "We're seeing an increase in regulation. This is one reason I think it will be a good time to retire. I won't have to worry about that stuff."

To hear the head of global product development complain about new design constraints is a bit surprising. Or not. But it is a lesson in how the mighty have fallen.  Here are five reasons why this response reveals a lot about just how broken this industry is.

1. Design is art practiced under commercial constraints. Henry Ford's offer of "any color, so long as it's black" was an admission that black was, at the time, the only color for fast-drying lacquer, and thus a constraint in designing for mass-production. Good design embraces constraints because doing so creates new market opportunities.  Bad design avoids constraints and, by doing so, limits opportunities.

2. The automobile industry, like any old and established industry, has been dealing with government-mandated constraints since before today's executives were born. Unleaded gas, seat belts, and air bags were all sure to bring the auto industry to its knees, and yet miraculously did not.  Imagine what would have happened if the big three, instead of lobbying against fuel efficiency for the past 30 years, embraced it.

3. One of the strongest arguments GM and others put forward in the past few years for why they would not design in more fuel-efficiency was that their customers did not want it and would not pay for it. Six months after the bottom of the SUV market fell out, it is hubris I hear when Bob Lutz says his strength is "designing what people want." That works when people are buying what you're building, but doesn't when they're not. 

4. While Lutz is complaining about being unable to design fuel-efficient cars, Ford's PR guys are touting their "dusting off" of fuel-efficiency technologies shelved decades ago (Ford see the future). And US cars currently average 21mpg, far below European and Japanese cars averages of 36 mpg and 31 mpg respectively. Efficient design solutions are already widely known and widely used--just not here. 

5. Finally and most critically, when it comes to designing new cars, Lutz has lost the distinction between design and public relations. Faced with new design challenges, it seems Lutz would rather reach for a microphone than a drawing board. The head of GMs product development has blamed more than the government for the challenge of designing better cars--also competitors, environmentalists, democrats, and even the Union of Concerned Scientists (saying "I'm not sure if they are concerned," he said. "But they are certainly not scientists." BW 11/2007).

When Alfred Sloan tapped Harley Earl in 1927 to design the new Cadillac, and later found the Art & Colour Department, GM led the world in design.  Times have changed. 

Greenbox, where IT meets energy

A very nice story on Greenbox graced the cover of February's Entrepreneur magazine.  Greenbox is a San Bruno startup pulling together and repackaging information about residential energy consumption. 

"We're calling it interactive energy management," says Smith, Greenbox's vice president of marketing. "How do you get [homeowners] more engaged with how, where and when they use energy and give them the tools to make better decisions?"

There are only a few places where Energy Efficiency has a chance to make real gains in the traditional model of Si Vallety entrepreneurship: low capital investment, high proprietary technology, and scalability. Greenbox is aiming directly at one of these places--the intersection between households, home area networks, smart meters, and utility databases, where a few smart programmers and marketing guys can create a set of tools and relationships that can find rapid growth and, hopefully, impact. 

The idea is similar to the flies engraved in urinals (see Nudges)--given something to aim for, it's amazing how consumers can be nudged to change their behavior despite a lack of clear incentives for doing so. Given the costs of improving existing energy infrastructure, and the relatively low returns to individual homeowners (even if they are better than investing in solar), changing behavior through non-economic means may be the most economical strategy.  

Greenbox is one of a number of similar efforts in this area, but also one of the leading companies and thus one to follow.

[author's note: a special shout-out to Matt Smitt, who participated in the Green Technology Entrepreneurship Academy 07]