The only constant is change…

I will be leaving both of my posts as Vice President of the Enterprise Innovation Institute (EI2) and as General Manager of the Advanced Technology Development Center (ATDC) by the end of the year. The Executive Leadership Team believes that it is time to recruit new leadership that is better suited to the next phase of EI2’s growth. Georgia Tech will be launching a national search for a new executive who will help the ELT implement the goals of the Georgia Tech strategic plan.

In a statement released by the Institute today (12 Oct 2015), they said: [link]

Stephen Fleming will be stepping down as the vice president and executive director of Georgia Tech’s Enterprise Innovation Institute (EI2), as of December 31, 2015. He made this announcement during a staff meeting earlier today.

According to Executive Vice President for Research Steve Cross, EI2 has been a driving force in the growth of Georgia Tech’s innovation ecosystem helping expand the Institute’s economic impact and job creation for the state. “We are grateful for Stephen’s seven years of service in this capacity and his support to EI2, Georgia Tech and Georgia,” said Cross. “EI2 has experienced remarkable success across all of its programs in recent years under Stephen’s leadership. Georgia Tech is grateful to him for his extraordinary contributions and we all wish him continued success in his next endeavors,” Cross said.

Chris Downing, EI2 associate vice president, has agreed to serve as the interim director during the leadership transition as a national search for a new director begins.

The Enterprise Innovation Institute is Georgia Tech’s business extension organization and serves as the primary vehicle to achieve Georgia Tech’s goal of expanded local, regional, and global outreach.

EI2 and ATDC have plenty of talented and skilled senior managers. A transition plan will be announced shortly, and I have no doubt that this great team will continue to perform brilliantly through an interim period. The Tech Square innovation neighborhood will continue to be a national model of economic development, and EI2’s and ATDC’s programs will continue to be at the center of that. I look forward to celebrating their continued success.

On a personal note, although I will no longer be working here, I remain a loyal Georgia Tech alumnus and donor. This place is very important to me, and the relationships I’ve built over the last eleven years have been some of the best of my life. That won’t change.

I’ll keep an updated résumé here and my LinkedIn profile here. I appreciate your support as I figure out what to do next. Thank you.

If you’d like a printable résumé/CV, you can download it here.

Photo courtesy of David Payne.

Georgia Tech Startup Summer is a faculty-led, student-focused, 12-week intensive pilot program for student teams to launch startups based on their ideas, inventions, and prototypes. At Demo Day, ten student startups assembled to demo the products and services that they are launching in markets ranging from agriculture to automotive technology to performance art to finance. During Startup Summer, team receive $20,000 in funding from an external investment fund that was seeded by a generous gift from Chris Klaus.

Demo Day is the final step in the “Learn – Make – Launch” curriculum spearheaded by the College of Engineering, and now being adopted by the other colleges across campus. It’s hard to believe that this is only the event’s second year! The first Startup Summer Demo Day was in August 2014, and it fit into the TSRB auditorium (100 seats). This one filled the Academy of Medicine auditorium (230 seats), and latecomers had to watch from the overflow room across the lobby.

I’ve been involved with technology startups since (gulp!) 1987. I’ve been to more venture capital conferences than I can count. I helped start the Georgia Tech Business Plan competition (now relaunched as the Georgia Tech Startup Competition). I’m on the board of TI:GER. I’ve seen a lot of pitches. And I was impressed.

First, there was the poise and comfort level of the presenters on stage. Not everyone can be Nick Selby (of “We Can Do That!” immortality)… although Nick was there, promoting a wind-power concept. But all the students appeared comfortable on stage, confident in their material, and quick to answer pointed questions from the judges (Steve Chaddick and Bill Jones). This doesn’t happen without a lot of effort by the students and a lot of coaching from the Startup Summer faculty.

Second, the pitches uniformly focused on the customer and the customer’s needs, not on the technology. There are much older founders with much more funding who haven’t figured this out yet. (I know; I was one once, and I funded quite a few more during my venture capital career.) These students have figured it out in their early twenties.

Third, the technologies themselves. I get so bored going to startup events where it seems every presentation is a cool new iPhone app. Yawn. This Demo Day was pretty much the opposite extreme. In a little over an hour, we saw ten startups. In alphabetical order:

Whew! That’s variety! And that’s a great example of the sort of technology diversity represented by Georgia Tech.

Photo courtesy of Sanjay Parekh.

Speaking of diversity: the teams were bright, energetic, enthusiastic — and overwhelmingly male. With a freshman class that’s over 40% female, there’s clearly some room for improvement here. I suspect that we’ll see a big change over the next few years.

Drownproofing 2.0

Y’all have heard me talking for several years about “Startups for Grownups.” And I do believe there is a real advantage to having some real-world experience before diving into the unknown of founding a company. But at the same time, I love Georgia Tech’s new focus on undergraduate entrepreneurship. Because we’re not just teaching these students how to be entrepreneurs. We’re teaching entrepreneurial confidence. That’s completely consistent with the sort of graduates that Georgia Tech is known for. And, indeed, it’s completely consistent with my “Drownproofing 2.0” column from 2012.

Some of these startups will launch and be successful. Some will launch and fail. And some will fail to launch, as the students go onto other things. But all of these students will bring entrepreneurial confidence to whatever career they choose to pursue — from taking a job in industry, to graduate school, or law, or medicine… or joining or founding a startup.

We started this process with 30 students in Startup Lab eighteen months ago. This year, we taught 120. Next year, hundreds. Soon… thousands?

It’s an exciting time to be part of Georgia Tech!

We’ve tweaked the model since then (most notably by adding the “Select” program in 2013). And we’ve graduated dozens of companies and helped hundreds of entrepreneurs.

We’re continuing to learn better ways to serve entrepreneurs in Georgia. Some of that involves changes to our physical space. More importantly, it involves changes to our membership model. So, last Tuesday, we held an event in the Hodges Room to “Renovate. Rebrand. Refine.”

Renovate

The Centergy building is almost 13 years old. The 2nd floor has remained basically untouched (except for paint and carpet) since the day we opened. As part of last year’s refinancing of our lease-purchase agreement, and in order to partially make up for the space shortfall from moving the Southern Company into our 1st floor space, we borrowed enough money to make some long-needed changes. We’ll be adding some new seed spaces, some new rentable suite space, and a more open lobby for casual interactions. You can get an idea of what it will look like here:

Construction will start this month, and will proceed in phases through the rest of this year. All occupied spaces will remain accessible during construction (although you may have to walk a little more circuitous path in some cases). Johanna Kaiser is leading the team on this, and I think everyone will be happy with the results.

Rebrand

For a couple of years now, we’ve had some confusion over the terms “ATDC Select” and “ATDC Community Member.” Effective immediately, we’re going to clear that up by renaming those programs as “ATDC Signature” and “ATDC Educate.”

“Signature” is a better description of what we’re doing with our core group of incubator companies… we’re providing them with the best experience that we can for an early-stage company. It’s an experience so comprehensive that we’re willing to sign our name to it.

(And history bears us out. Five years after graduation, the companies that experienced our “Select” program have a 90% success rate. That’s extraordinary.)

At the other end of the spectrum, “Educate” is a better name than “Community.” (For one thing, the ATDC community is a lot bigger than the “ATDC Community” program. Does that confuse you? It confuses me!) For another, the team led by Jen Bonnett has greatly expanded our educational offerings, and we now have one of the most comprehensive curricula for technology entrepreneurs anywhere. Currently, nearly 900 individuals representing over 400 startups are enrolled in one or more of our courses.

But it wouldn’t be worth the effort to rebrand if we were just placing old wine in new bottles. That leads us to the last, and most significant change that we announced this week.

Refine

Admission to Select — now Signature — is intensely competitive. And since 2013, we’ve realized that we spend a lot of staff time on companies that aren’t really ready for Signature status yet, but they have an energized founder, an interesting technology, and a promising business model. Internally, we know who we’re spending time with, but there hasn’t been a convenient label for the outside world until they reached the threshold for Select.

At the same time, our Flashpoint experience and our Worldpay gift got us thinking hard about accelerators.

We have an interesting opportunity to do something special with these very young companies. If they’ve completed our core curriculum in “ATDC Educate”, we want to be able to work with them on a more focused basis. Some of them will want to be tenants in our expanded Seed Space (small offices in Centergy or the Ford ES&T building). Some will want access to our new Design Studio for prototyping physical devices. And probably all of them will need coaching from our catalysts and volunteer mentors.

Effective immediately, we’ve launched a third, middle tier of membership for ATDC: “ATDC Accelerate.” Like Signature, admission is by invitation only, but the threshold is a lot lower. We encourage interested companies to meet with one of our catalysts to see if there’s a match.

Service Offerings

Some people still think of ATDC as a real estate operation. That’s true, but it’s terribly incomplete. For over a decade, we’ve provided “The Five C’s” of services to our members. With the latest refinement, it’s worth taking a look at how those services apply to each of the three membership tiers. (We’re also doing more with our graduate companies, so they’re almost like a fourth tier.)

Click to embiggen.

It’s a complicated machine! There are over a dozen full-time employees dedicated to providing our members with the best entrepreneurial assistance in the world, and they leverage another half-dozen part-time employees (Entrepreneurs in Residence, or EIRs — who are some of the most successful, experienced entrepreneurs around) and dozens of volunteer mentors (many of whom have been senior executives at Fortune 500 companies).

ATDC is unique. There are lots of incubators in the world… heck, there are lots of incubators in Atlanta. But as a public entity, ATDC doesn’t take equity in our member companies. And, except for rent for those companies who choose to be tenants (it’s not required), we charge minimal fees. Perhaps most importantly, we provide broad and deep access to the resources of Georgia Tech, one of the top research universities in the world. Whether being on campus to commercialize advanced research through our VentureLab program, or having access to leading-edge laboratory equipment, or hiring our students and graduates, ATDC companies have a priceless set of resources that can’t be matched by other incubators.

We’ve been doing this for 35 years, and we’ve created thousands of jobs and attracted billions of dollars of investment to Georgia. It’s one of the most visible parts of EI2, and one of my goals for the next few years is to build more bridges between ATDC and the rest of the organization — especially MEP, the Health IT Extension Program, and Startup Ecosystems. I’m proud that ATDC is getting such high visibility lately, and I’m proud of everyone across EI2 who helps make them successful. Spread the word about the new membership model, and keep up the good work!

A Very Long Title

The title they originally suggested was “Why Atlanta is an exciting place to do business if you’re a British tech company (and why Silicon Valley isn’t the only tech hub in the US).”

My response:

I love Silicon Valley, but I don’t live there. I don’t need to. If you are looking at expanding into the U.S. from overseas, Atlanta may be a better location for your technology company than Silicon Valley. Entrepreneurs from all over the world — including the U.K. — are finding that out.

ATL: Access. Talent. Lifestyle.

Access

Silicon Valley is a technology monoculture; Atlanta is not. Atlanta is home to companies like Coca-Cola, Delta Air Lines, NCR, Equifax, the American Cancer Society, and the North American headquarters for both Mercedes-Benz and Porsche. So tech companies here can get direct access to decision makers at these major potential customers. And when it’s time to expand overseas, Atlanta’s airport has nonstop flights to 80 cities worldwide.

Atlanta startups focus on building real solutions for real customers who generate real revenue. That may not get you coverage in TechCrunch, but it’ll make you very popular with your bank.

For example: Lumense builds sophisticated chemical sensors from their home in Georgia Tech’s incubator. Coca-Cola — headquartered less than a mile away — regularly meets with companies in the incubator to scout for promising new technologies. After understanding how Lumense could fit into their quality-control process, Coke led a $2.6 million financing round of Lumense in late 2013.

Talent

The single biggest challenge for technology companies isn’t money — it’s attracting and retaining talent. Factories used to be built next to rivers to take advantage of water power. Now, creative-class workplaces want to be next to a research university to take advantage of brain power.

And Atlanta wins — not just with Georgia Tech, one of the best engineering schools in the United States, but with 250,000 more students in over 50 colleges and universities. These students are bright, ambitious… and many of them don’t want to work in corporate America. They are a continually-replenished river of talent for large and small technology companies to recruit.

Lifestyle

There’s more to life than a job. And in terms of lifestyle, Atlanta wins again. Housing is cheap and plentiful, from downtown highrise flats to suburban McMansions. The weather is great, with outdoor activities all year long. The new Atlanta Beltline is one of the most ambitious urban redevelopment projects in the United States. And as one of the nation’s film and music capitals, Atlanta’s image resonates with young people worldwide, making it an attractive destination for the young and the restless.

Open For Business

All these factors have triggered a boom in technology startups across metro Atlanta. The city’s 6 million people sprawl across a Combined Statistical Area of 27,000 square kilometers (larger than Wales). That means there are multiple technology hubs, from the skyscrapers surrounding Georgia Tech in Midtown, to low-rise office buildings in Buckhead, to suburban office parks surrounded by SUVs in Alpharetta, Dunwoody, and Gwinnett. Georgia Tech’s ATDC — the Advanced Technology Development Center — is the oldest and largest university-based incubator in the United States, covering a wide range of technologies from software to advanced materials to life sciences. And the new privately-financed Atlanta Tech Village houses the largest technology co-working facility in the Southeast.

What about diversity? In Atlanta, there are many successful tech startups led by women, by African-Americans, by Hispanics, and by gays and lesbians. Startup Chicks, the growing global network of female technology entrepreneurs, was launched in Atlanta in 2009 and now has more than 2000 members. And the Atlanta University Center (including Morehouse College, Spelman College, and Clark-Atlanta University), the largest center of African-American higher education in the United States, has a new focus on student entrepreneurship. This diverse pool of tech startups has helped lead Georgia out of the Great Recession, generating approximately 16,000 jobs (more than 20 percent of all new jobs) over the past two years.

But it’s not just homegrown companies that are transforming Atlanta’s technology scene. It’s also attracting relocations large and small… from behemoths like NCR and the American home of Mercedes-Benz, to small startups like Soneter, Groundfloor, and Aerogility.

Example: Aerogility

Aerogility is a UK tech company specializing in software to manage aviation fleets. Its first major project was with the RAF Tornado fleet for the UK Ministry of Defence. But after the cutbacks triggered by the 2010 Strategic Defence and Security Review, Aerogility needed to expand into the United States — the largest aviation market in the world.

According to Gary Vickers, the CEO, “One UK tech CEO told us that there are only two places in the USA to open an office, Park Avenue or Silicon Valley. That didn’t sound very well informed to us.” But he discovered Atlanta’s advantages in access, talent, and lifestyle, and opened the company’s American office here in 2011.

Vickers continued, “Atlanta is a great place for us to do business. As well as the cost base and available talent pool, it is a very accessible place for us with an excellent airport. As Londoners we like the idea of flying in and jumping on the “Tube” (MARTA transportation system) to our office and not waste time driving across the city. And besides, we really like the weather!”

It’s been quite a ninety days for EI2.

APLU

In November, the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (APLU) named Georgia Institute of Technology the winner of its 2014 “Innovation” award for our statewide economic development efforts in a number of sectors.

• Read more.

AURP

In December, the Association of University Research Parks (AURP) named Technology Square its “2014 Outstanding Research Park Award” winner. Georgia Tech was called out as a key collaborator in building Tech Square. Since launching 10 years ago, Tech Square has emerged to become one of the premier research and innovation centers in the country, and a model for others to follow.

• Read more.

NCR

And in January, NCR announced the relocation of their world headquarters to Technology Square. That could mean as many as 4000 jobs being added to the vibrant mix of education, research, public service, and private-sector companies that are already here. As I’ve been saying for years, “economic development” once meant building factories next to rivers to take advantage of water power. Now, it means building creative-class workspaces next to a research university to take advantage of brainpower.

• Read more.

Triple Crown of Endorsements

As I said, that’s a remarkable ninety days. Three different worlds — academia, research, and corporate America — have independently endorsed EI2’s efforts on behalf of Georgia Tech.

Last summer, I wrote on this blog:

I host a lot of visitors to campus — from other universities, from other states, from industry, and even from other countries. I love telling our story because, as I often say internally; “It’s easy when all I have to do is tell the truth!”

It’s even more true with external endorsements like this recent Triple Crown.

Overnight Success

What amuses me is that our strategy — and, to a large extent, our implementation — haven’t really changed. GT President Wayne Clough and Governor Roy Barnes already had the vision when they announced the “Fifth Street Project” in 2000. Fifteen years later, the world is taking note. In the last few weeks, as the public face of EI2, I’ve been interviewed on local radio, TV, and newspapers. Although the audiences are new, the message hasn’t changed.

I remember an interview with the Dixie Chicks during the height of their popularity. One of singers bristled at being called an “overnight success”… they played “barbeque joints, nursing homes, grocery stores, and street corners” for a decade before hitting the big time in Nashville. I feel the same way. We’ve been spreading our brand of university-based economic development for a decade… but only now are people listening. Endorsements like the three we’ve received in the last three months really help.

We’re not done. The new advanced-computing research building on Spring Street will anchor Tech Square Phase II with 600,000 square feet of new space, supporting new opportunities in interdisciplinary research, commercialization and sustainability. We’re beginning to talk, very quietly, about Tech Square Phase III. And in the longer term, there’s potential for “North & Northside” — a new mixed-use development anchored by the North Avenue Research Area and Technology Enterprise Park — to transform the west side of campus just as Tech Square has transformed Midtown.

The brainpower of Georgia Tech is amazing. One of EI2’s main roles is to help connect that brainpower to the economy of Georgia. It’s working, and others are noticing. Y’all are doing a great job. Keep it up!

Wow. That’s a mouthful. What does it mean?

At the most practical level, it means that a team of people from all over campus, but led by EI2, conducted a four-month self-study of our economic development engagement and impact. That team included

• Chris Downing – EI2, Co-lead
• Juli Golemi – EI2, Co-lead
• Bill Cutts – GTRI
• Kirk Englehardt – GT Communications
• Shabana Figueroa – GTPE
• Lynne Henkiel – EI2
• Greg King – USG & EI2
• Carl Rust – OIR
• Mark Weston – GTPE
• Jan Youtie – EI2

And, although not part of the team, we received valuable advice from Margaret Wagner Dahl, EI2’s AVP of Health Information Technology. I appreciate all of your hard work!

At a more meaningful level, it means that APLU acknowledges Georgia Tech’s work with public and private sector partners in the state and region to support economic development through innovation and entrepreneurship, technology transfer, workforce development, and community development. According to Peter McPherson, President of APLU,

“Public universities serve as economic engines for their local communities and states by conducting cutting-edge research to reach new breakthroughs, and by developing the talent to help existing businesses grow stronger and enabling new ones to develop and thrive. The institutions receiving the 2014 Innovation and Economic Prosperity University designation serve as models. They demonstrate how public research universities extend beyond their campuses to engage their communities in economic development that creates jobs and improves lives.”

But, at the most significant level, it means that what we’re doing in EI2 in working. And the self-study gives us the beginnings of a road map to increase Georgia Tech’s economic engagement activities and enhance our partnerships around the region.

The self-study — documented in a 33-page application — included conducting a survey of 3000 of Georgia Tech’s internal and external stakeholders, collecting key economic development metrics, and comparing current economic development strategies in the context of Georgia Tech’s strategic plan. The assessment findings were presented at a feedback forum attended by both internal and external stakeholders.

Some of you were able to attend the forum. But you’ll be pleased to know that due to our focus on innovation and economic impact, Georgia Tech is increasingly being seen as a destination for top-notch faculty and students, for established and startup technology firms, and as a leader in economic development strategy and deployment.

EI2’s economic impact to the State of Georgia leverages our annual state support of approximately $7 million by a ratio of over 14 to 1. Tech Square is a national model for university-based innovation districts. As President Peterson has said, “Tech Square is a testament to what is possible when higher education, government, business, and the community work together. In just 10 years, it has become the place to be for high tech innovators and entrepreneurs in the Southeast.” And our education programs — both for students and for industry — are some of the best in the world.

Interestingly, one of the only areas where our survey showed a real need for improvement wasn’t in the programs and metrics surrounding our economic impact — but in communicating our successes. One of our first new hires in FY15 will be a marketing and communications manager, a new position jointly funded by Institute Communications, to start addressing that issue.

But the new IEP designation is a chance to reflect on everything that we’re doing, and to see how it meshes together across EI2 and across all of Georgia Tech. As you know, I host a lot of visitors to campus — from other universities, from other states, from industry, and even from other countries. I love telling our story because, as I often say internally; “It’s easy when all I have to do is tell the truth!”

Our programs are superb. Our people are superb. And, even though our funding isn’t where I want it to be, we get a lot done for the dollars we spend.

It’s nice that APLU noticed. Others are noticing, too.

I read a lot of books… a couple of hundred per year. Some are serious, some are fluff, some are instantly forgettable. But occasionally, to quote Francis Bacon, “Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested… to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention.” That last category describes Nassim Taleb’s newest book, “Antifragile.”

Taleb is famous for his earlier works “Fooled by Randomness” and “The Black Swan.” This is a sequel of sorts, but stands on its own… and makes a different point.

Taleb starts by noting that there is no word for “the opposite of fragile.” (Not just in English. He checked 21 other languages.)

“Of course there is!” you say. “Lots of words: robust, resilient, strong…”

No. Take the concepts in turn. Something fragile — like a teacup — responds to a shock (physical, emotional, financial…) by shattering: a major negative consequence that is difficult or impossible to repair. Something strong — like a rock — can ignore the shock that shatters a teacup. Something resilient — like a rubber ball — may deform, but will quickly return to its original state, none the worse for wear.

But certain things can actually undergo certain levels of shock and actually improve. It’s like a teacup that gets stronger if you drop it.

What on Earth reacts like that?

Living things. If you lift more weight, you become capable of lifting more weight. If you learn new mathematics, you become capable of learning more mathematics. If you play baseball, you become capable of playing better baseball. If you get a smallpox vaccine, you become capable of fighting off a more serious smallpox infection.

Or networks of living things (communities, enterprises, economies, religions…). Schumpeter called it “creative destruction.” But destruction isn’t required. An organization that has survived crises (work stoppages, supply chain disruptions, financial overreach) is simply more capable of competing effectively than an organization that has not. Of course, what’s not visible is the survivorship bias: the organizations that did not survive are not competing anymore.

Obviously, there are limits. No matter how much time I spend in the gym, I won’t be able to lift 2000 pounds. And no matter how efficient my supply chain, my company won’t survive if General Electric chooses to make a direct target of me. But, within surprisingly large ranges, the concept of “antifragility” crops up again and again in all aspects of life.

In Taleb’s words, “That’s what makes entrepreneurship work: the fragility of entrepreneurs and their necessarily high failure rate.” And it’s not just high-tech entrepreneurship. Take restaurants: Any particular new restaurant has a high failure rate. In Taleb’s words, it is “fragile.” But the restaurant sector as a whole is “antifragile” since the surviving restaurants (in that neighborhood, or city, or region) observe the failures, and adapt accordingly. New restaurants come and new restaurants go, but there’s never an overall shortage of restaurants to eat at.

After identifying the trait of antifragility, Taleb goes on to analyze what it means. In anecdotes and in mathematical equations, he repeatedly makes the point that we can adjust our actions to optimize the impact of random variation, even if we don’t understand the underlying mechanism. For example:

Lifting weights increases your muscle mass. In the past they used to say that weight lifting caused the “micro-tearing of muscles,” with subsequent healing and increase in size. Today some people discuss hormonal signaling or genetic mechanisms; tomorrow they will discuss something else. But the effect has held forever and will continue to do so.

In other words, even though we don’t actually understand how lifting weights increases muscle mass, it’s sufficient to know that it does. He gives similar examples for companies and for financial speculators… knowing what can be far more important than why.

That’s isn’t always a comforting message for academics, and for others who pride themselves on knowing “why.” But the flying bird doesn’t care about theories of aerodynamics, it just flies.

I’m fortunate enough to have met Nassim Taleb several times… I’m flattered that I’m one of the 98 people he follows on Twitter (certainly asymmetric as compared to his 70,000 followers!). I described my first encounter with him as “conversing with a swarm of butterflies. A swarm of glittering, hyper-intelligent cyborg butterflies. Who aren’t quite sure whether to take over the Earth or migrate to another star system.”

This book reads the same way… some reviews have criticized it for suffering from ADHD. But I loved the style, since it forced me to put the book down and think every few pages. (This is not the book to toss into your bag before leaving for the beach this summer. For that, I recommend the Grimnoir Trilogy.)

The Antifragile University

There’s far more to this book than I can summarize in 1000 words. But I kept returning to a thought while reading it: “What would an antifragile university look like? And how can we turn Georgia Tech into the first one?”

I suspect that Taleb would tell me it’s unlikely. In his words, “Education is an institution that has been growing without external stressors; eventually, the thing will collapse.” He would certainly tell us that the answer is not an updated strategic plan: “There is no evidence that strategic planning works—we even have evidence against it.”

I was peripherally involved in writing our own current Strategic Plan, and my boss was the editor. Hundreds of very bright people around campus spent an aggregate of thousands of hours developing it. And we published it to great fanfare in 2010. It has five Goals, ten Objectives, and sixteen Strategies.

And we completely missed MOOCs.

Which, two years later, were the hottest topic in higher education.

Additional centralized planning wouldn’t have helped us with MOOCs. What did help us was the fragmented, decentralized nature of power at Georgia Tech, where one college dean was able to launch our online Master’s degree in Computer Science without endless wrangling in the Academic Senate and more-endless argumentation among the Board of Regents. So Georgia Tech is rightfully seen as one of the leaders in figuring out what MOOCs will mean to the research university of the 21st century. Not because our centralized planning was smarter than the other guy’s centralized planning. But because of an inherently antifragile response to changing conditions… “stressors.”

Maybe we recognized the stressors faster than the other guys. Certainly, we reacted faster than they did. (And, so maybe, the “antifragile university” isn’t as unlikely as Taleb would think.)

How do we do more of that? And how do we build fewer fragile networks that shatter at first impact with reality?

And, in EI2, how do we help our clients — startups, manufacturers, hospitals, communities — do that?

I suspect that variations on this question are going to become more and more important over the next few years. Taleb’s book is a good way to start thinking about answers in a different way. I recommend it.

“Virtually every combination of industry relationship or economic development activity can be found at Georgia Tech, and in a very real sense, the university is an operating partner with Georgia state government in the implementation and management of a variety of technology-focused initiatives. Perhaps more than any other research university in North America, economic development is an integral, critical component of the mission of the Georgia Institute of Technology, and this has been true from its very inception.”

I use that quote in a lot of my presentations because (1) it’s true, and (2) it helps distinguish GT from lots of other schools. Twelve years later, what do they say about us?

“One of the more heartening aspects of the Georgia Tech story is that the institution has largely stayed true to the aspirations of the founders back in the 19th century. Those aspirations were to develop a first class technological university, one that combined excellence in academic education with a hand ‘in the shop,’ and one that enabled Georgia to create a modern economy. All those things have been achieved and the bar continues to be raised as its impact is felt throughout the world. Georgia Tech is one of the great American stories [of how] sustained inspired leadership, diligence in execution, and an ever-expanding vision and culture can accomplish amazing things.”

The second is a bit wordy, but I think I like them both! I highly recommend that you download and read the entire report. But if you don’t, let me hit some high points:

Universities Included

Innovation U 2.0 focuses on twelve universities that “are exemplars not only in the creation of innovation, but also in terms of outcomes that have economic impacts. Compared to the 2002 study, the universities changed a bit:

University	2002	2014
Arizona State University		X
Brigham Young University		X
California Institute of Technology		X
Carnegie Mellon University	X	X
Clemson University		X
Georgia Institute of Technology	X	X
Massachusetts Institute of Technology		X
North Carolina State University	X	X
Ohio State University	X
Penn State University	X
Purdue University	X	X
Stanford University	X	X
Texas A&M	X
University of California at San Diego	X
University of Florida		X
University of Utah	X	X
University of Wisconsin at Madison	X
Virginia Tech	X

Georgia Tech is one of six universities in both studies. The authors explain that it was time to revisit the study due to significant changes over the last decade, including:

• Growing consensus on the important TBED role played by universities.
• Changes in the government science technology innovation policy and funding landscape. (They specifically call out NSF I-corps, the i6 challenges, and NNMI.)
• Maturation of innovation strategies.
• Churn among the top performing universities.

For each of the twelve universities, “Innovation U 2.0” examines five key “problems or opportunities”:

1. University Culture: Goals and Aspirations
2. Leadership
3. Entrepreneurship
4. Industry and Community Partnering
5. Technology Transfer

A Few Quotes…

On organization: “Notable among our cases has been the growth of boundary-spanning enabling organizations and activities. Heretofore, most universities developed external partnerships on a case-by-case basis; several of the universities in this volume have established centralized and consolidated organizations to function as enablers. The Enterprise Innovation Institute at Georgia Tech, headed by a Vice President, coordinates and oversees 14 programs dealing with innovation and entrepreneurship, most of which involve partnerships with external organizations.”

On entrepreneurship: “The placement of entrepreneurship within a business school silo is the conventional arrangement, but if it inhibits the ability of any student in any discipline to practice entrepreneurship within that discipline (for example if turf issues limit the number of courses/seats offered), this may not be a good thing.”

On economic development: “The technology clusters of companies around major research universities are no accident. They are evidence of what happens when boundary spanning between abstract theory and applied science occurs. University innovation matters because it is an important engine to generate entrepreneurial ecosystems within local economies.”

Georgia Tech

They quote approvingly from our 2010 Strategic Plan: “As envisioned by our founders, Georgia Tech will continue to be an economic driver for Atlanta, the state of Georgia, and the nation…we will create a culture where students and faculty are both scholars and entrepreneurs.” There are several nice descriptions of Georgia Tech:

• “Georgia Tech — a place that is both theory and science-driven but also a place that has become very good at fostering technological innovation, applications, and knowledge-based enterprise.”
• “One of the assumptions and themes of this book of cases is that innovation, entrepreneurship, and private sector interest is enhanced when universities do more research and problem-solving in the context of interdisciplinary centers and institutes. Georgia Tech has wholeheartedly embraced that assumption.”
• “These involvements put Georgia Tech in fairly exclusive company among institutions that are able to launch and maintain these fairly complex partnership relations with other institutions as well as corporate technology leaders.”
• “Of note, roughly 50% of licenses executed by Georgia Tech in 2012 were granted to Georgia companies.
• “Georgia Tech takes its innovation mission seriously, and has done so for a long time.“

And there’s one of of the better writeups of EI2 that I’ve ever seen (and that includes ones that I’ve written!):

The programs are quite diverse in terms of clients or participants, physical and organizational location, and collectively they encompass a continuum that extends from early technology and venture development to established firms with significant history.

These programs leverage a mix of state, Federal, and private sector funding to enhance economic development in the state of Georgia. Conceptually, the programs and clients are all united by the emphases on innovation and entrepreneurship, and the structure enables program leadership to share best practices and policies across the heterogeneous mix.

Among the cases in this volume [Georgia Tech’s EI2] is probably the most novel organizational solution to the inherent diversity of activities that fall under the labels of innovation and entrepreneurship, and one that seems to have enough authority to give it a fair trial.

Taking Innovation to the Community: Technology Square

A few months ago, we celebrated Technology Square’s tenth anniversary. Innovation U 2.0 understands what Georgia Tech ahs done here, and the impact we are having:

“Technology Square can be seen as an intentional design effort by Georgia Tech to foster inter-sector engagement by creating a mixed-use district. The plan was announced in 2000 and much of the site was built out by 2003, although additional buildings are still being constructed. Much of the site was originally vacant surface parking lots. Tech Square can access the main campus via a pedestrian plaza bridge.

Georgia Tech buildings located there include: the College of Business, notably the Ferris-Goldsmith Trading Floor; the Advanced Technology Development Center; Venture Lab; the Technology Square Research Building, that is home to five research centers with 500 faculty members and students; and the Georgia Tech Hotel and Conference Center. Technology Square also houses extensive retailing, restaurants, condominiums, and office buildings.

Technology Square is still only 10 years old. It is early and the aspiration is that this area will evolve into a high tech bazaar with a large variety and number of entities involved.”

Conclusion

I’ve cut-and-pasted a lot of this column, because it’s widely distributed and I want people to know what others are saying about Georgia Tech in general and EI2 specifically. None of what we do is easy. None of it happens without great effort. And — although it’s easy to forget — none of this was inevitable.

There are plenty of great research universities who didn’t value their potential for economic development, didn’t embrace an innovation mission, and who didn’t have the history of leadership and vision that we’ve had over the decades at Georgia Tech.

Y’all may know the story of the pig and hen discussing ham and eggs for breakfast. The chicken is involved but the pig is committed. People all across Georgia Tech are involved in the university’s innovation mission, but the people of EI2 are uniquely committed. It’s nice to see some external validation that what we’re doing is recognized. Keep up the good work!

It was a heck of a show, and over 500 people were here to share it with us. If you missed it, don’t miss next year!

KP Reddy, ATDC; Dan Roy, MessageGears; Kyle Porter, SalesLoft; Vijay Balasubramaniyan, Pindrop; Stephen Fleming, Georgia Tech

In addition to the Showcase and the fast-pitch event, we celebrated the graduation of three companies from ATDC: MessageGears, Pindrop Security, and SalesLoft. You can read profiles of each of them here.

Here were my remarks to close out the graduation ceremony.

It’s ATDC’s day, but I have to ask: who watched the InVenture Prize last night?

It started with 560 students last October, culminated in a combination of Shark Tank and American Idol last night. The teams and their inventions were incredibly impressive. I think you’ll see some of those kids on this stage in a few years.

The Inventure Prize: this is what happens when you have a scary smart student body and you challenge them to invent something useful. They’ll blow you away.

So… welcome to Tech Square: Look around outside! We’re at the center of an innovation ecosystem that didn’t exist ten years ago. This is what happens when you have a public university investing a good fraction of a billion dollars in a public-private partnership to rebuild a blighted area of our city. This is the good stuff you get for your tax dollars, and I thank you!

And welcome to ATDC! You’ve seen the Showcase down the hall. You just saw three great graduates — including Pindrop, which has checked the box on every startup support program we have, from mentoring to incubation to direct investment. This is what happens when you have a Top Ten engineering school with a 100-year commitment to economic development.

We’ve attracted billions of dollars in investment capital. We’ve helped create billions of dollars of shareholder value in these companies. And incidentally, for those who say Atlanta is a real estate town, we’ve helped create billions of dollars in real estate value in Midtown Atlanta.

Tech Square’s energy has started to attract corporate innovation centers – AT&T, Panasonic, ThyssenKrupp, GE, NCR… and one more brand name to be announced very soon. In opening the AT&T Foundry last fall, Ralph de la Vega summed it up best.

“When we locate a Foundry facility, our number one criterion is to be part of an ecosystem that fosters innovation, which usually occurs at the intersection of premier education, high technology, and an entrepreneurial mindset.”

That’s Georgia Tech, that’s Technology Square, and that’s ATDC.

I want to close by reading the last paragraph of a brand-new report on Innovation Universities that I’ll blog about next week:

One of the more heartening aspects of the Georgia Tech story is that the institution has largely stayed true to the aspirations of the founders back in the 19th century. Those aspirations were to develop a first class technological university, one that combined excellence in academic education with a hand ‘in the shop,’ and one that enabled Georgia to create a modern economy. All those things have been achieved and the bar continues to be raised as its impact is felt throughout the world. Georgia Tech is one of the great American stories [of how] sustained inspired leadership, diligence in execution, and an ever-expanding vision and culture can accomplish amazing things.

Indeed, this is an amazing place, and my staff and I are honored to be part of it.

Congratulations to MessageGears, Pindrop Security and SalesLoft!

And on behalf of ATDC and of Georgia Tech, we thank all of you for attending. See you next year!