Public, Private Sectors Align To Spark Big Ideas and Profit

A new regional alliance of higher education, government and business leaders plans to host a summit in the District tomorrow aimed at boosting funding for research, encouraging entrepreneurism and breaking down barriers that prevent innovative ideas and technologies from getting to market.

With more than $18 billion invested in research and development, the Washington region may match Silicon Valley in funding new ideas, but it falls far short in bringing its work to the marketplace, according to leaders of the new Chesapeake Crescent Innovation Alliance.

The group is an offshoot of the Chesapeake Crescent Initiative launched this year and is designed to boost the region's economic and environmental vitality by bringing together area leaders.

"We have great innovative assets and lost opportunities in innovative performance," said former America Online executive George Vradenburg, a vice chairman of the Chesapeake Crescent Initiative.

He said the D.C. region ranks near the bottom of metropolitan areas in the number of patents and licenses produced per $1 million of research and development investment.

"We need to prime the innovative engine, create an alliance of players who will agree to move the regional innovation agenda forward," Vradenburg said.

The effort comes as the region's technology leaders try to revive the industry's fortunes after the bursting of the dot-com bubble and the departure of corporate headquarters for AOL, Sprint Nextel and others. Though the government technology sector remains strong, there's been less innovation from local commercially oriented tech companies.

Partly because R&D occurs across a multitude of jurisdictional lines -- district, state and federal governments, plus public and private universities and research agencies -- and because of a natural tendency for each to focus on its own needs, the region is not as effective as it could be at business creation, commercial application of scientific breakthroughs and generation of economic development, Vradenburg said.

California is steeped in the culture of bringing technology and science ideas to market, in part because higher education early on served as an incubator for innovators. Hewlett-Packard founders William Hewlett and David Packard attended Stanford University, for example, and the university now owns the patent to key technology used by Google's search engine. The university last year earned about $50 million from technologies licensed to more than 400 companies, only a fraction of which came from Google.

William E. Kirwan, chancellor of the University System of Maryland and member of the Chesapeake initiative, said one goal is to break down barriers among university campuses, federal labs and the business sector.

"The high-level research going on here can compete with any region in the country," Kirwan said. "I think that what we need to grow in our region is this greater spirit of entrepreneurship and more early seed capital investment money."

AOL and Revolution founder Steve Case, Carlyle Group co-founder David Rubenstein, former Legent chief executive Mario Marino and D.C. developer Herb Miller are also participating in the summit, which will identify barriers to the group's goals and develop a plan to grow capital and improve connectivity between researchers and investors. Virginia Tech President Charles W. Steger, Virginia Gov. Timothy M. Kaine, D.C. Mayor Adrian M. Fenty and Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley are also involved.

"The market is a very resilient animal," Vradenburg said, but without greater efforts to bring innovations to the marketplace, "you'll achieve [economic growth] at a slower pace."