SwampFox

Big, bold innovation is hard. Often very hard. It is unrealistic to expect that everything will be perfect and that there will be no set backs. The sum total of my scars is that everything is harder, takes longer, and and costs more than you think. The military has an apropos maxim, "On contact, plans change."

A mythology exists that somehow when human beings do innovation in private entities they are more certain to be successful. There have been spectacular failures in private companies, as we are all too painfully living through today. I was a child in the 1960s riveted to the Apollo moon missions, which was a spectacular success of government innovation.

Many of us in South Carolina have been working hard to make a transition to a more creative, knowledge based economy. The University of South Carolina took on a big, bold project, Innovita, as a foundation to attract and develop best-in-the-world talent in South Carolina.

There is no question that Innovista has gotten off to a rough start, as big, bold innovations often do. When that happens, it is often appropriate to change leadership, which the University of South Carolina did. Innovista is very fortunate that the new director is Don Herriott, a proven leader formerly with Roche. I am impressed that Don clearly stated recently that Innovista was too focused on real estate initially, and now will focus more on Innovista as a concept to attract and develop talent. The first step towards progress is frankly admitting problems. The vector of the change at Innovista is precisely right.

In a recent article in The State, Governor Sanford was quoted, "I'm not belittling Don, but it begs the larger question of when are we going to get universities back to the core mission of educating students."

Educating students implies the transmission of knowledge from a teacher to a student. That begs the question of where the knowledge comes from. Modern research universities in the United States have three foundations: research, education, and public service. Research involves the discovery of new knowledge. Universities are particularly well suited for basic research, with long time horizons and mechanisms like tenure to protect out-of-the-box thinkers. Once knowledge is discovered, universities are also well suited to transmit it to society broadly through publication, through education, and through practical public service applications. The same characteristics that make universities good vehicles to discover and transmit knowledge, make them ill-suited to commercialize the knowledge they create, as any entrepreneur who works with a university partner is abundantly aware.

Private companies are not well suited to basic research that moves society forward over the long term. Faster paced, less collegial, and more action oriented than academia, private companies are the creatures in the ecosystem with the DNA tuned to meeting the demands of the today's marketplace.

A great definition of innovation is matching the evolving needs of customers with the evolving capabilities of solutions. Prosperity takes a partnership between universities doing what they excel at, pushing the limits of what is possible, and private companies doing what they excel at, which is sculpting those capabilities to serve the needs of society.

Governor Sanford also threw down the gantlet, challenging the notion that we can effectively link entrepreneurs with researchers. Not only can we do that in South Carolina, we are in fact doing it. In recent years, we have built considerable infrastructure to connect university talent to entrepreneurs, from incubators to investors and entrepreneurial support organizations. Some of these are government entities, some are non-for-profits like chambers, and some are private entities. Each has a niche in our innovation ecosystem.

A great place to see first hand the exciting progress we are making is the 66 presentations by people who are among the world's best at InnoVenture Southeast 2010 on May 11 and 12 at the Carolina First Center in Greenville. You can hear directly from industry leaders, entrepreneurs, and preeminent scholars, including several at Innovista. Kick back and relax with us at a BBQ the evening of the 11th on the campus of a great industry/academic collaboration, the Clemson University International Center for Automotive Research, where we will announce the Przirembel Prize for Open Innovation.