CTO and Globalization

These new frontiers and the imperatives of international cooperation will raise questions for all societies. Nations will find themselves with increasingly less influence than virtual communities or multinational corporations. World religions may need to seek unity in diversity. (44)

I have developed a model based on corporate commercialization/incubation as a powerful concept aimed at driving shareholder value by leveraging existing and emerging IP in the form of startup ventures rather than simply waiting for it to be developed and sold under the corporate flag and channels to market. The traditional model was to package the IP in a form that was attractive to external venture partners and, if possible, locate management talent from within the lab to run the ventures. This model has stalled in the past year due to the slow down in the US economy, terrorism, uncertain political situations, the threat of world regional instability, and lower than expected corporate profits. And yet, the need remains—sizable reservoirs of intellectual property (IP) representing vast amounts of wasted shareholder value go untapped. This year's difficulties, the continuing innovation need and a new set of world driving forces have opened the door to new model—Global Incubation. Global Incubation holds the promise of moving commercialization of untapped assets forward by leveraging advantages that are only possible through a worldview. The driving forces include:

• Availability of low cost, high quality sources of R&D and the specialization of various regions in specific technologies and skills. (Programming, bioresearch, etc.)

• There is increased activity with open source community development (Linux for example), which propels additional growth in emerging technologies.

• Local development organizations and governments around the world are funding economic commercialization projects to start the growth of new industries in their countries. This provides additional and unique sources of funding from international/regional funding sources and regional economic development centers.

• Investment by the World Bank in the Infodev initiative designed to expand and grow business incubation in various regions of the world. Specifically, the three-year program of grants will provide technical assistance to support new international incubators, a worldwide incubation support center, and programs to support the performance and growth of existing incubators in developing countries. In addition, several United Nations organizations have been involved in supporting incubation initiatives since the 1990s including those in Russia, Poland, Romania, Uzbekistan, Czech Republic, Malaysia, Ecuador, Dominican Republic, Pakistan, and Columbia. Further, global foundations and endowments are providing for economic development funds to support international incubation.

The new global incubation model is based on the selection of appropriate and strategic technologies for commercialization, the coordination of those individual initiatives into a strategic plan and portfolio for innovation, the location of specific global commercialization centers with the strongest potential and lowest cost structure to move the technologies forward, and the funding of these initiatives through non-traditional and global sources. It will be highly integrated into the work conducted by CTOs. This model is in step with, and complements the concept of globalization. It recognizes how tightly coupled the world's economy is today and fuels additional markets, additional opportunities and funding sources. For instance, developers in Russia have the opportunity to market their products and services to European and US companies. Unique technologies in South America or Central Asia could be leveraged in the biotechnology incubator of a large multi-national company, Specialty software concepts could be modeled, developed and tested in emerging markets, etc. (66) (33)