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Upcoming Events
Friday, October 20, 2006
N2TEC Quarterly
Board Meeting, 3:00 p.m. Business
Development Center,
Rapid City, SD
Friday, October 20, 2006 N2TEC Community Speaker
Series featuring Ashley Swearingen, 7:00 p.m.
Howard Johnson, Rapid City,
SD
 
N2TEC is a national institute devoted to bringing the wealth
creation process to regions of the country that are not enjoying the economic
benefits of technology entrepreneurship.
http://www.n2tec.org
818-414-1841
Email: edcaner@gmail.com
or
allen@n2tec.org
N2TEC’s
Partners
Black
Hills State University
California State Univ. Fresno
Caltech
Case Western Reserve Univ.
Claremont Graduate University
CEO Praxis
Cornell University
Groxis Inc.
Johns Hopkins University
Microsoft Corporation
NASA-Ames
NCIIA
Rose Hulman University
SETI Institute
The Pennsylvania State
Univ
University of Arkansas
Univ Central Florida-CENTECOM
University of Maryland
University of Pittsburgh
University of South Dakota
University of Southern California
Univ of Texas
at Austin
N2TEC Summer Institute Entrepreneurs
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N2TEC Launches Community Speaker Series in Black
Hills
 N2TEC Institute is launching its
Expert Series on October 20 at 7:00 p.m. at the Howard Johnson in Rapid City. Co-sponsored
by Black Hills Business Development
Center, this series
will feature experts on various business topics related to entrepreneurship
and economic development.
Ashley
Swearengin
currently serves as the Director of the Office of Community and Economic
Development at California State University,
Fresno. As the Director, Ashley works with
industry, economic development officials, and elected and community leaders
in an eight-county area on efforts related to implementing “Knowledge
Economy” initiatives, such as industry cluster development,
telecommunications infrastructure, rural development, entrepreneurship, and
building leadership capacity. She is
also responsible for leading the Regional Jobs Initiative, a comprehensive
community and economic development strategy focused on the creation of 30,000
net new jobs in the Greater Fresno, California Region, a largely agricultural
area, by the end of 2008. Under Ashley’s direction, the Central Valley
Business Incubator more than doubled in size and reached 100% occupancy.
In her
talk entitled “Economic Development in an Entrepreneurial World,” Ashley will
provide helpful tools for practitioners on building economic development
collaboratives using her experience in developing the Regional Jobs Initiative,
a consortium of 600 businesses, 24 non profits and 3 elected bodies, and the
California Partnership for the San Joaquin Valley, an 8-county public-private
task force initiated by Governor Schwarzenegger.
To RSVP for the event, please email allen@n2tec.org
Black Hills Corridor Poised to be an American Heartland
Growth Center
The
renowned “innovation economies” of Silicon Valley, Boston’s I-128 corridor
and North Carolina’s Research Triangle, have histories that go back many
decades. It is only recently that similar patterns of fruitful regional
innovation initiatives have begun surfacing in parts of the American
Heartland. Although crop and livestock production will remain a critical
foundation of the economy, there is a multi-faceted emergence of
high-technology services and communications, energy production and
manufacturing as the critical levers for new employment and wealth creation.
The
Black Hills Technology Corridor is showing signs of becoming just that kind
of economic engine according to a forthcoming report by the Washington,
D.C-based New America Foundation. In Rebuilding
America’s Productive Economy: A Heartland Development Strategy author
Joel Kotkin and N2TEC Board member Delore Zimmerman highlight regions
that are leading the way in building America’s new technology-based
economies.
“We
believe this new vision for the Heartland is already taking shape. In
contrast to the prevalent media vision of emptying towns and embattled
farmers, we see a countryside beginning once again to become a hotbed of
capitalist creation and innovation. It is a reality already taking shape in
various regions from the “technology corridors” in the Dakotas, the “hidden
tech” belt in western Massachusetts,
the revived communities along the eastern Cascades to the massive growth of
ethanol and biomass facilities across the vast landscape of this country.”
The
basic building blocks of these regional innovation systems include
entrepreneurial companies, universities and colleges, basic and applied
research laboratories, technology transfer mechanisms, regional public and
private development organizations, (e.g. trade associations, chambers of
commerce, economic development organizations) finance institutions, capital
investment programs, business incubators and activities that help to
vigorously network firms and organizations.
These
regional systems are proving to be effective because they mobilize the
“triple helix” of business, government and universities to innovate and create
new sources of economic growth.
N2TEC
President Featured in Fortune Small Business Magazine
 Dr. Kathleen Allen knows from
experience how difficult it is to judge the market for a new technology. But it’s even more difficult when there is
no “pain” in the market for what the technology has to offer. When the technology addresses a potential
want and not a compelling need, the pitch to investors and customers is more
difficult. That was the dilemma facing Allen when she was asked by Fortune
magazine, in her role as Director of the USC Marshall Center for
Technology Commercialization, to advise inventor Steve Hines, a former Kodak
Labs and Disney pioneer and a talented optical engineer, on the feasibility
of his “Holo-box” 3D display technology.
Hines has visions of his Holo-box being in every museum, theme park,
and trade show in the country. But the
cost of the unit is high, about $12,000, and it takes up valuable
merchandising space, which may be a significant negative for retailers. During the fall semester, Allen has a team
of  University of Southern California MBAs who have technical expertise
working with Hines to study the options.
Is this a solution looking for a problem or a technology with real
commercial potential? Hines will learn
the answer to that question over the next two months, and N2TEC newsletter
readers will find out as well when a summary of the feasibility results is
included in the Winter edition. Find
the complete article at http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fsb/fsb_archive/2006/09/01/8384902/index.htm
or in pdf form with
images at http://www.usc.edu/org/techalliance/pdf/Allen_FortuneSB_Sept2006.pdf
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Students Complete First Annual N2TEC Summer Institute
On July
27th, twenty students completed the first annual N2TEC Summer
Institute held on the Black Hills State University (BHSU)
campus. The
10-week full-immersion internship, funded by the SD EPSCoR STEP Program,
engaged attendees in the art, mindset, and process of
technology entrepreneurship, including opportunity identification,
feasibility analysis, and building and growing a new venture. Attendees were taught by both visiting and
local experts and entrepreneurs.
Highlights
of the summer institute included a Launch Invention Workshop, meetings with
community members and economic development organizations in Spearfish, Lead, and Hot Springs,
tours of research facilities in the Black Hills, including BHSU, the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology (SDSMT), and
private corporations, and classes in technology feasibility analysis,
investing in new ventures, entrepreneurial finance, market research, SBIRs,
business planning, economic development, and building entrepreneurship into
an academic curriculum.
As a
final assignment, 7 student groups completed a Feasibility Analysis of a
technology that each is preparing to commercialize. On July 27th,
Students presented their results to investors from the Black
Hills region who determined which group was most likely to
succeed. Amidst stiff competition, the
winner was A-Cut Meats (mad cow resistant meat) headed by Anna
Hermanson and Zach Parsons.
Jayco Robotics (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles) headed by Jason
Howe, Jenna Isaacson, and DJ Kjar received special mention. Both teams subsequently presented at the
State EPSCOR meeting in Rapid City
on September 26th as a preview of the South Dakota Giant Vision
Business Plan Competition to be held in April, 2007.
The
Summer Institute is currently recruiting students for next summer. Graduate students and undergraduate seniors
are eligible to participate, with particular preference to students who have
a specific technology that they would like to commercialize. Stipends are available to students from South Dakota. Contact Ed Caner (EdCaner@gmail.com)
for more information.
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