Event explores universities’ role in the economy

Mary Walshok knows first hand that the business of building a knowledge-based economy is a team sport. Sometimes rough, often demanding and once in a while, very lucrative, it is Walshok’s experiences and attitudes as one of the founders and driving forces behind the Connect program that helped change the face of the San Diego economy more than two decades ago.

As states and universities around the nation are advancing more pro-active roles in economic development activities such as tech transfer, research parks, start-ups and spin-off companies hoping to fuel high-wage economic growth, Walshok experiences necessitate the attention of local business leaders, tech entrepreneurs and University.

Walshok is associate vice chancellor for public programs and the dean of the Extension Division of UCSD, which educates 45,000 San Diegoans each year, and a professor in the Department of Sociology. Walshok brings her message here on Wednesday, Sept. 22, in a forum sponsored by the Wisconsin Center for the Advancement of Postsecondary Education (WISCAPE) at the Pyle Center. Her presentation is titled “The University, Economic Recovery, and the Changing State-University Relationship.”

Back story:

When faced with a decline in fishing, real estate and defense industry jobs in the mid 80s, San Diego built vibrant biotechnology and information technology sectors in its place.

But it wasn’t always that way. “Twenty years ago, there was no venture capital here, very few IP attorneys and nothing in the way of angel investment,” says Walshok.

Now, San Diego consistently ranks third, behind Boston and the San Francisco Bay Area as a biotech center.

UCSD Connect, which began in 1985, has now grown into a huge network that links 750 area high-tech and biotech companies and research facilities. Their mission is to create a culture of entrepreneurship and support high tech business development. That means lawyers, accountants and capitalists who understand the business of innovation.

Today, Connect is global with a growing European presence with offices in Denmark and Sweden.

So, how did they do it?

The answer is really quite simple- bring the right people together.

And while the recipe for connectivity seems simple enough, it can be very difficult to actually implement, cautions Walshok.

“There are no one-size fits all solution,” she says.

“Collaboration is hard,” says Walshok. It is not just getting the technology out there that solves the problem, but having the manufacturing, marketing and business infrastructure applicable to high risk, innovative science companies that are the real building blocks for growth.

Walshok asserts that success in San Diego is directly attributed to the relative young age of the UCSD campus, a general commitment of support from a variety of sectors such as the chamber of commerce, city and county governments. The strong commitment of the community, including small business owners, as well as a financial support from the larger business community helped to pull Connect together.

“We had the luxury of creating the mechanisms appropriate to the challenges of today and tomorrow rather than adapting programs that had been around for 150 years and making them work,” she reasoned.

But the question remains: can the Connect model work elsewhere? The short answer: a resounding yes.

Walshok believes that despite the individual nuances of each community; publicly funded research institutions do share common principles of practice that transcends academic or geographical characteristics.

“We all need to look forward,” says Walshok.

Back when they first started out, Connect took a novel approach to the problem. This emerging “new economy” took some new thinking so Walshok and her colleagues worked to develop a model to connect science to the business community in a way that doesn’t impede the free inquiry of science but can also result in both job and wealth creation for the region.

Walshok explains that when they focused in on that question, “how we can connect business and science in a new way,” they ended up coming to the conclusion that science based innovation and entrepreneurship is a team sport.

“It requires knowledge and competencies that transcend all the traditional academic boundaries as well as lot of traditional boundaries that exist between the University and the community,” she says.

In the 1980s, when Connect was just getting off the ground, Walshok made a couple of key decisions in laying the groundwork for its success. She recruited a prominent local businessman, Bill Otterson, as its first director. When venture capitalists came to town, Walshok showed off San Diego’s high quality of life, relatively cheap land and abundance of intellectual resources.

Add a little networking for good measure always helps. Walshok called on people to use their personal relationships with financial community, venture capitalists, technologists and other specialized professionals to further the cause.

Walshok agrees. “It’s all about six degrees of separation,” she muses.

Where does the university fit in?

“The university plays a role in being an honest broker in this new economic model,” says Walshok. She cautions, however, that the challenge that faces many institutions is potentially the most divisive. “They must become less fragmented and take a more integrated approach when working with the new economy,” she suggests.

“The University, Economic Recovery, and the Changing State-University Relationship,” will take place Wednesday, Sept. 22, noon-1:30 p.m., at the Pyle Center, 702 Langdon St. The WISCAPE event is free and open to the public.