Technology Valley of Death Crystallized

--
I posted this recently on Mercury Technology Labs' blog:
http://mercurytechlabs.blogspot.com/2006/12/technology-valley-of-death.html
--

In a previous post we talked about the technology fire hose – the exponential growth of new innovations available, growing in larger array of fields that can be applied to a growing set of opportunities. In this post we also stated that a serious deficiency may have struck the economic innovation engine. With this post we would like to crystallize the problem taking examples from our experiences.

In the Mid-South innovation community, we have found that the total amount of research conducted is well over a billion dollars each year-- depending on the boundary you strike, it would be over three billion. By some measures this should equate to 100 to 200 or even 300 patent applications and based upon these patent applications there should be in upwards of 5 to 15 new business ventures started each year with these technologies. The problem is the region is not seeing the start-ups. It appears there is a deal flow problem and we don't attribute it to lack of money to support the deals. We attribute it to human capital. Who is supposed to actively bridge the gap between the raw technologies to a market application?

Q. Is it the responsibility of the researchers to create "start-up" new business ventures?
A. The vast majority of researchers lack entrepreneurial confidence, time, and experience. They don't actively seek people with expertise; instead they rely on tech transfer process of universities, government, or corporate to swing into motion.

Q. Is it the responsibility of angel investors?
A. Angel investors do not create deals and they generally do not want to be first money on the table for a seed stage venture. They are passive investors generally waiting for the deals to find them.

Q. Is it the responsibility of the venture capitalists?
A. Typical venture capital fund structure cannot support the opportunity. They are looking for preexisting deals that have generally proven they don't need the money for venture creation; the growing business concern needs VC money for scaling.

Q. Is the responsibility of technology transfer officers?
A. It is hard enough for a cash strapped technology transfer team to protect intellectual property, let alone market technologies actively. Furthermore the teams generally barely have enough time to manage IP disclosures and IP protection.

I think we can all agree that R&D Engines are generating sufficient raw technology candidates, yet these do not advance to applied business applications or new ventures in the incubation stage. This phenomena is has been termed as the "technology valley of death." This chasm is not crossed often – in the Mid-South we have only a handful of examples available over the past 10 years.

Passivity is not working well for most R&D engines. The new winners will be those who actively survey the landscape and take advantage of technology maven networks. The new winners will create the deals.

So now the question to be answered is who will fulfill the need and what will be their model for success. Please comment or provide further insights.
--