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Peter Midgley, founding member of the Idaho Technology Council, believes the coordinated effort offered by IGEM has been a long time in coming for the Idaho tech industry.
In that earlier climate of go-go prosperity, it was easy for the private sector to become complacent, but Larsen said those were the players who should have been working all along to push collaborative programs like IGEM. That’s what was happening in Utah, where government, education and business came together in the wake of the Dot Com Bust to diversify the state’s tech sector. The result was USTAR, and the upshot was that while Idaho lost more than 4,000 jobs in the early days of the great recession (and many thousands more in the years to follow), Utah enjoyed an unemployment rate 2.5 to 3 percent lower than ours, invested $460 million over seven years into research and development and tech transfer and, according to Larsen, probably added 110 new companies and 8,000 jobs. Today, the Milkin Institute ranks Utah as a first-tier economy and Idaho sits in the third tier—out of four. “Its easy to do that armchair quarterback thing and look back and say what we should have done,” Larsen said. “But now is the time to look forward to what we can do now to diversify our economy on the tech side, so when there’s a downturn in the economy, you don’t have all your eggs in one basket. IGEM represents that.”
SCHOOL OF HARD KNOCKS Not everyone is convinced that the need for IGEM is so urgent, however. As with any government-supported program, there are those who cast a skeptical eye on whether the state can outperform private industry. When it comes to IGEM, Rick Ritter, who has long helmed Idaho TechConnect, is one of those skeptics. TechConnect is a statewide private nonprofit that helps start-ups with everything from raising capital to commercializing their products. It’s also the organizer of events like TechLaunch, a business pitch contest on May 15-16 at the Grove Hotel in Boise. Ritter points to TechLaunch, in its ninth year, as a prime example that Idaho’s private sector is already doing a bang-up job of turning ideas into market-worthy ventures. “We had 29 applicants to TechLaunch from around the state—almost double the best year in eight years,” Ritter said, adding that number was winnowed down to 10 finalists competing for $15,000 in cash prizes.
14 | MAY 16-22, 2012 | BOISEweekly
“Clearly, there are some well-thought-out ideas and they’re spread widely across the state—from Sandpoint to Rexburg and all the places in between,” he said. “All of them will be top-quality ideas and most will be ready to invest in now.” Ritter, while supportive of increased investment in university research, said that IGEM runs the risk of “throwing good money after bad.” The Center for Advanced Energy Studies, which will get $2 million in permanent, ongoing support from IGEM, has received funding from the Legislature since its inception—though under IGEM, those monies will be increased and made a permanent line item—and Ritter contends that university research programs have already benefited from state support through the Higher Education Research Council, which operates under the State Board of Education (albeit, the amount of HERC funding has been smaller than that offered by IGEM). “It’s a similar program to what they’ve done for the past three years,” Ritter said. “How many businesses have we gotten out of that? Frankly, they’re giving them $2 million to continue doing what they’ve been doing without any evidence that it works.” Rather than focus solely on university research, Ritter said a better public-private model would be similar to what is done in Washington, where businesses and entrepreneurs seek out university partners to meet specific needs—not the other way around. “All the money stays inside the education system, but the business gets the direct benefit of it because you’re solving technical issues that they actually have, not something that some faculty member dreamed up in their head,” he said. “Let’s be solving business problems, not creating something we don’t have a clue on.” What’s more, Ritter added, it would be wiser for support to go where the start-ups already live. “Ninety percent of all the start-ups in the state have nothing to do with the universities,” he said. “Are we making an investment in 10 percent of the marketplace to somehow get higher returns? ... I understand the need to have research, but saying you’re going to invest in university research and it’s going to result in more start-ups—there’s no evidence for that.” WWW. B O I S E WE E KLY. C O M