U Arizona Shifts Gears, Aligns Tech Park Strategy with Tech Transfer Mission
Tech Transfer
David Schwartz
November 5, 2014
Reaching the 20-year point in its history might in and of itself be sufficient reason for a university technology park to reassess and perhaps revamp its strategy, but at the University of Arizona there is an added incentive: It recently became one of the four separate components of Tech Launch Arizona (TLA), the university’s technology commercialization arm, which was created in 2013. The other three components are technology transfer, corporate and business relations and new venture development.
Though Tech Parks Arizona has always been affiliated with the university, it didn’t really coordinate its efforts with tech transfer initiatives until TLA was formed and took the park under its wing. The new “Global Advantage” strategy relies on what are termed “attraction teams” in an effort to more actively identify companies from around the world that want to collaborate with the university.
“When TLA was created as an organizational entity, the opportunity was to present more of an end-to-end ecosystem,” says David Allen, PhD, TLA vice president. “It just became a logical conclusion that if we were going to build this ecosystem to take our commercialization to the next level, we had to work both forwards and backwards into and from the tech park to develop more value into the ecosystem we delivered.”
Bruce Wright, associate vice president of Tech Parks Arizona, notes several other factors behind the change. “We had the arrival of a new president of the university, and she has developed and outlined a strategy called ‘Never Settle.’ We wanted to make sure our strategy and role within the university were aligned with her plan and vision,” he says. “Then, we ramped up the new TLA program and have been integrated into that. In addition, the role of research parks has been evolving nationwide; we are all trying to understand how we can better support the university. The big thing is to try to improve connectivity between the parks and the main campus so they are in alignment and support each other.”
In order to do that, Wright and Allen agree, the tech park needed to become more focused on the key areas of university research. “The president has identified the key strategic areas of research that we pursue,” notes Wright. “We have to take those areas of focus, grab those inventions, and drive them through the commercialization process all the way to business start-ups to help create wealth in our region.”
Accordingly, the strategy was formed around a number of areas including advanced energy (primarily solar energy); agriculture, water and arid-lands technology; medical devices and diagnostics; mining technology; and intelligent transportation systems.
“As we drill down into those areas we find specific sub areas, like informatics, imaging, and the whole area of environmental sustainability,” Wright explains. “We use those to help us filter through and narrow down to companies interested in collaborative research or locating here.”
