CONNECT yourselves...

My program in San Diego is very much rounded around the UCSD - University of California San Diego, so I thought it would be a bit boring after the Valley... But I was wrong...

San Diego used to be rather sleepy and not very dynamic and vibrant, and back in the 80s it was in a big trouble due to simultanous changes in local economy... and then a group of individuals, thought leaders, innovators and businessmen sat together and decided to do something about it... something to improve competitiveness of SD... initiate and facilitate communication between the universities and business... stimulate clustering of high-tech and generally of high value added sectors... ensure sustainability of the economy in SD and its companies... That's when CONNECT San Diego was born...

CONNECT is a non-profit organization with member support from research community and universities, the private sector, investors and government... Now, about 25 years after its inception CONNECT really is a conglomerate of activities, which include the Springboard program which helps companies to receive funding (there were over 350 companies which received investment directly out of the program, and over 1,500 companies which went through the program and at the end became successful in fundraising), research, several industry clusters (cleantech, stem cells etc.)... There are also activities which CONNECT initiated but were spun out later, like the Tech Coast Angels group or Global CONNECT network...

I spent the whole morning at CONNECT, meeting with the co-founder of Global CONNECT Greg Horowitt (who is also a partner of Victor Hwang at T2VC), met also Director for Program Partnerships Peter Thomas and Lada Rasochova of Rady School of Management (originally Czech who studied in SD and has lived there since)... It was very inspiring talking to them about linking Research with Talent and Money and how it works in San Diego... One of great quotes by Greg: "we don't consider it innovation until it goes through commercialization"... Czech academics should hear this - actually not just academics, majority of people just don't understand the difference between SCIENCE and TECHNOLOGY or IDEA versus BUSINESS (examples at web site of Czech Dragons' Den - only in Czech, unfortunately)...

BTW, did you know that there was over 2 billion dollars of venture capital invested in San Diego last year...? FYI, San Diego county has just over 3 million people... Comparison to the Czech Republic...? Forget it - see my post from Stanford about the Czech stats...

My afternoon meeting was then with another guy with a UCSD business card, Raymond Smilor, Director of Beyster Institute which is the UCSD's institute for Entrepreneurship... And it was a great meeting - not only is Ray a passionate golfer, but mainly he is a guy with extensive experience from academic environment, trying for all his professional life to enforce entrepreneurship, tech transfer and commercialization, and... however unprobable it may seem... successfully...

And he also brightly discovered the problem in the Czech Republic - "if there is no leadership at the universities, it cannot be done", which unfortunately sounds simple but true... another thing that cannot be easily changed - too many inhibitors for such change and still no leadership...

When talking about role models and their necessity, Ray told me about the "Tall Poppy Syndrome" and he related it to Australia... Unfortunately, I know that syndrome very well, just didn't know the term - but will use it from now on...

I spent over 1.5 hours talking to Ray, and meeting him surely was one of the brightest points on my journey so far... Also, I got a copy of Ray's book: Daring Visionairies, How Entrepreneurs Build Companies, Inspire Allegiance and Create Wealth, with a signature - very much looking forward to reading it...