Connecticut Technology Council

Bigger Than Chicago and You’ve Never Heard of It…

The CTC’s Matthew Nemerson travelled to China this March with a delegation from Connecticut including Marcom LLP senior partner John Schuyler who is also chairman of the Connecticut – US Commerce Department Export Council, senior staff from CT Innovations, a partner from Wiggin & Dana, LLP and Daniel Drew, the new mayor of Middletown.  Unlike most trade missions, the goal was not to sell products per se, but instead to seek direct investments from Chinese government and private entities that are looking to purchase or take positions in American firms with technologies that are of interest to the Chinese.  Quite a turn of the screw from 25 years ago when Connecticut first set sail for China with an official trade mission led then by Governor William O’Neal. The hope in 1987 was to land big contracts for manufactured goods to sell or make them – inside in a growing country. Now, with trillions of US dollars on hand in various types of organizations and a growing group of internationally savvy investors, China is a legitimate and huge source of venture capital. 

Along the way if the companies can find partners to exploit growing Chinese markets that is more upside, but for the forty or so firms – some CI portfolio firms, others clients of Wiggin & Dana or Marcom and seven established CTC members – were all being pitched as if this were the old CVG Crossroads event.

Eighty government officials and curious investors showed up in Jinan City, Shandong Province and two days later nearly 100 were on hand in Shenyang, Liaoning Province – a bulging city of 4 million with a software incubator itself larger than a few northeast corner Connecticut towns. 

CTC firms represented by Matthew included Axxun, Directedvision, i-Mark, Secure RF, Spot On Networks, Tribute Creations and VR Sim.  All of the companies seemed to be of some curiosity to business people in the two audiences, but no deals have been completed to date.

In addition to the meetings and presentations, the delegation was shown the site of a newly planned 1.7 million person “Bio-Tech City” in Liaoning province. Still under construction, it will be complete in five years time, together with a 180-mph high-speed rail connection to Beijing.  They sure seem to do things differently over there!

 

 

Building a Pipeline of Fast Growing Technology Firms is Again a Top State Priority

Why does the state of Connecticut have some of the best assets for innovation and technology development in the country of all states, but regularly performs far below the levels of expectation for new firm startups and the growth of jobs in medium sized tech firms, those with 10 to 100 employees? 

This fundamental question was the subject the of the CTC’s ground-breaking 2010 study The Connecticut Competitive Agenda Project.  

In 2011, CTC President & CEO Matthew Nemerson and Agenda Project manager Casey Pickett turned the Agenda report into a set of policy suggestions and concepts leading to a road-map for Connecticut to begin turning around the “innovation and entrepreneurship gap” in the state. Pickett was then hired by the Department of Economic and Community Development mid-way through last year to become the state’s Director of Innovation.

Ideas from the CTC Agenda helped secure over $125 million in new funding over the next five years for various innovation and job creating concepts at the October 2011 special “Jobs” session of general assembly.  About $5 million of the funding has been ear-marked especially for efforts to build a strong network of innovation supporters and connected systems throughout the state to make a strong attempt to compete with Massachusetts and New York City for high potential tech startups and to better assist key medium sized firms already here to grow by investing in innovation and other key strategic assets.

The Tech Council has been working closely with the state to play a role in what will be called the Connecticut Innovation Ecosystem. 

We hope to report on exciting news around this two year effort soon.

Connecticut Technology Councils Calls for Support of High Growth Firms, Provide More Funding For Connecticut Innovations and Asks Governor to Oversee Building of Innovation Eco-System

State second largest statewide business trade association issues 2011 Agenda

East Hartford, Conn. – Connecticut Technology Council said future economic growth is very possible as it issued its 2011 public policy agenda today for the consideration of the new Governor Malloy Administration, the State Legislature and other economic development groups .  The Agenda is organized around the key parts of what has become known as the “innovation eco-system.” This is the set of conditions and relationships that give a region the ability to create companies and jobs through the complex process of commercializing intellectual property.  Parts of this eco-system include university or corporate tech transfer, adequate investment capital, start-up business acceleration, incentives, networks, available talent, global connections and regional infrastructure.  Each of these ingredients is addressed in the Agenda.

Board members Kevin Burns, CEO of Precision Combustion in North Haven and Frank Marco, a partner in the New Haven founded Wiggin & Dana law firm, were the co-chairs of the task force that oversaw the drafting of the document over several months and involving over half of the groups 45 person board during many meetings and discussions. 

“Building on the findings of our ground- breaking Competitiveness Agenda report published two months ago, this Innovation Agenda sets out government objectives and strategies needed to build high quality jobs and a sustained growth environment in Connecticut,” noted Burns. “We can rebuild Connecticut’s competitiveness, but we must act.  We will follow this Innovation Agenda immediately with specific policies and action steps and will be talking about these with the administration and the legislative leaders in the weeks and months ahead.”

“We are delighted that Governor Malloy and the legislative leadership have indicated their appreciation of the importance of innovation to creating the jobs of the future economic prosperity for the state, and believe that the public- private initiatives recommended by our Agenda can play a key role in this effort”, said Marco.

“Connecticut finds itself in a categories of locations that are going to depend on high value added jobs and very competitive companies, in a league with places such as Silicon Valley, Boston, Austin Texas, and countries such as Denmark, Singapore and South Korea. We are moving full speed into a post industrial future – that doesn’t mean we won’t have manufacturing – but it does mean that R&D and innovation will drive our economic growth. This agenda addresses what we and other locations have learned about what it takes to compete in this league. Ironically we invented this type of economy in the 1840s and excelled for 150 years. We can do this again,” said CTC President and CEO Matthew Nemerson.

The technology council will produce a third document later this month outlining a range additional specific projects and concepts in each of the eight areas in which the Agenda has issued broader recommendations.

The Agenda is viewable below and available as a downloadable PDF file at www.ct.org.
Press Contact: Matthew Nemerson 860 289-0878 x333 or 203 444-6482, MNemerson@ct.org

Connecticut Technology Councils Calls for Support of High Growth Firms, Provide More Funding For Connecticut Innovations and Asks Governor to Oversee Building of Innovation Eco-System

View more documents from CTTech

CTC Participates in meeting with White House office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP)

Matthew Nemerson met with representatives of the OSTP to discuss the President’s Startup America and JumpStart America  efforts while in Washington DC on February 16 to take part the first ever Innovation Coalition Capitol “fly-in”.   

The Coalition is made up of various national trade associations including TECNA (the Technology Councils of North America) of which Matthew is currently the volunteer President of the Board of Directors.  Other members of the coalition include ACA (Angel capital),  SSTI (tech policy), NASVF (seed and venture funds), NBIA (incubators), AURP (Unversity research parks) and AUTM (University technology managers). [link to slide deck].

The meeting with the OSTP was to work out ways the group can work with the Obama Administration to help target funding for the development of regional “innovation eco-systems” around the country and to coordinate future grant programs for innovation from the SBA and EDA.

About 150 represenbtives of the coalition including the heads of seven tech councils attended the meeting and heard from Senator Mark Pryor (D-AR); Representative John R. Sarbanes (D-MD),  John Fernandez, U.S. Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Economic Development,  Phil Singerman, Associate Director (AD) for Innovation and Industry Services, National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and former Yale Law student and Yale Entrepreneurship Institute graduate Doug Rand, Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP).  Dan Berglund, President and CEO, State Science and Technology Institute (SSTI) and Matthew addressed the larger group as well.

Afterwards Matthew met with the new staff of Connecticut Senator Richard Blumenthal and talked personally with Senator Joe Lieberman.

The topics addressed in the morning session included the America Competes Act , national Angel Tax Credit concepts, the importance of innovation for sustainable job creation and worries about decreases in budgets for critical agencies such as NIST, NSF and NIH.

Special thanks to CompTIA for that groups sponsorship of the day.

To the Connecticut Technology Community:

I want to thank each of you for your time, commitment and support this past year.  In the midst of change, turmoil and challenges, I think we can all say that the community represented by the Tech Council rose to the occasion and tried to make the state a stronger and more competitive location for the 2,000 high tech businesses and some 200,000 employees and participants in our clusters of the state’s economy.

We have always had the ability – again with your financial support -  to bring the community together through our many programs and awards events.  Over the past five years we expanded greatly to try to change for the better the entire innovation eco-system of the state.

So, a year a half ago, when we lost the state grant and all funding for our important, successful, but sadly political incorrect (we still don’t know exactly why) program the “Innovation Pipeline Accelerator” we came together – with your input - as an organization, to do some soul searching and to create a refined strategic vision for the organization.

Freed from the need to tip toe around the state’s relationships with the tech community (for fear of losing our funding…) and from our own focus on service and not advocacy, we shifted gears to have a louder, truer and more focused voice in time for whatever new administration would come into power this coming January.

Through our successful grass roots and policy efforts with last spring’s “Jobs Bill,” the recent announcement of the Competitiveness Agenda and our new Alliance with the CT Venture Group, we have completed step one of repositioning ourselves as the leading advocates for a strong and vocal technology community.  Even if you don’t agree with every part of what we are saying , at least we are getting in the habit of being heard.

We don’t know what next year will bring, but there is every reason to believe that despite the serious budget issues about to slam us, the new Malloy administration will be a great partner and leader in working to make the state more competitive and to take many of our issues to the next levels. 

Fast growing tech firms are so intrinsic to the creation of new jobs that it is hard to imagine we will not be working closely with all levels of government just as we will expand our ability to work with the many parts of the technology community. 

I have included some links to our recent reports, some coverage in the press, and our press releases.   Hope you can listen in to the radio tomorrow for more about the competiveness agenda…

----- December 29, 2010 WNPR and  Where We Live featured a discussion of the CT Competitiveness Agenda –

Where We Live: Connecticut Tech Jobs
Show taped 12/29/2010, can be viewed/ downloaded at:
http://www.yourpublicmedia.org/content/wnpr/where-we-live-connecticut-tech-jobs
Guests: Matthew Nemerson,  Kip Bergstrom, Michael Gallis, Casey Pickett, Steve Obsitnik

This report has been mentioned in the following CT news sources: 

Hartford Business Journal, December 27, 2010
Hartford Courant - December 20, 2010
Hartford Courant - December 19, 2010
Hartford Business Journal, December 17, 2010
The New Haven Register
Norwich Bulletin 

Happy New year

Matthew Nemerson
President & CEO
Connecticut Technology Council
www.ct.org

A strong environment for fast growing tech start-ups?

The global hunt for high value sustainable jobs will be the top policy goal of our new Governor. How he solves this challenge will ultimately be more important than the onerous task of balancing the state budget.

In my capacity as president of TECNA, the trade association for technology councils in the US and Canada,  I have been meeting with public policy makers from the Obama Administration to discuss their views of how to create more high-potential tech start-ups.  Their efforts to support and coordinate innovation policy are unprecedented since the end of the moon program.   Let’s hope they are not derailed by coming budget cutbacks and political changes in DC. We should all work to be certain their efforts spill into places such as Connecticut to make our region stronger and better equipped to grow our key technology clusters.

If the White House, EDA, SBA and others agree to really support a series of regional innovation networks – or whatever they are called – it will be a watershed moment for US policy. First, by encouraging dialogue about innovation based growth between parts of the country, and second, by providing grants and contests that might increase funding for programs that will result in more American research being commercialized here, rather than somewhere else in the world.

A recent survey of the CEOs of fast growing companies in Connecticut confirms the need to build on key parts of our innovation support environment: human and cluster networks, universities partnerships and target early stage capital.  The region’s tech community must be strong advocates for connecting our new Governor with key Connecticut resources such as CI, Yale and UConn, CCAT and our base of global private firms with these new concepts to grow our capacity to be a strong environment for fast growing tech start-ups.   

 

 

Matthew Nemerson
President & CEO
Connecticut Technology Council

Connecticut Competitiveness Agenda Project

In January 2010, following a several month strategic planning process by the CTC’s board of directors, the Council embarked on a detailed set of efforts we call the Connecticut Competitiveness Agenda Project to help give the next state Governor an intimate view of how high potential technology firms see the world and the advice they have for making Connecticut more competitive.

While the full results will not be released for several more weeks, the massive data and meetings reviewed to date show that while there are many key challenges facing the tech community – many if not most of the issues can be handled through changes in attitudes, policies and leadership and will not require major new expenditures.  The final report should be full of revelations of opportunities that are within reach of the next administration.

Realizing that most discussions of economic development focus on preserving the clusters we have or looking to see which new industries seem to hold potential, it was decided that the Council would come to the table with a new thrust, providing the point of view of the leaders of the technology companies in the state which are doing very well.

A new set of issues to consider
We guessed that issues of taxes, energy, and traffic would not be of top importance to these leaders, but that a new set of concerns and examples of best practices from other places would emerge. Our assumption is that these leaders have a unique sense of what else was out there in this country or the world that might entice their firms to leave or split operations in the future and this would provide excellent benchmarks. So we sought the advice and insights of these successful CEOs and will try to describe what the state might do to keep their firms here as they continue to grow.

The end result will be a detailed set of recommendations on how to grow companies and jobs in the state to the two final candidates for Governor, former Stamford Mayor and Democrat Dan Malloy and former Ambassador to Ireland Republican Tom Foley.

The report is based on two major research undertakings. Council president Matthew Nemerson noted that since May 2010, “the Council has been interviewing CEOs from a carefully selected list of about fifty Connecticut (and a few former Connecticut) firms, each of which can be considered fast growing and part of one of the state’s key technology clusters.  The Council also hired a group of intern “fellows” from leading local schools to research past reports on what makes states and countries grow their tech industries and also to review previous reports done about Connecticut itself.” 

Leadership from UTRC and Covidien
The effort has been led by a Task Force chaired by UTRC Executive Director David Parekh and Covidien’s CTO Paul Hermes.  Day Pitney partner Rick Harris has been overseeing the Fellows who are in turn led by a joint Yale FES and SOM Masters degree student Casey Pickett (pictured below on far right, with (l to r)Matthew Nemerson, A. Obajinmi,Moh Sharma, Vivian Zhou)    

The result, according to Council Chairman Chris Kalish, Director of GE’s Edgelab, will be, “a truly unique and timely set of insights from the most credible point of view in the economy – successful CEOs of firms who are adding jobs and who have the potential to add more in the years ahead. What these men and women think about Connecticut and the advice they have is invaluable.

The Technology Council has a unique window into how and where jobs will be created in the state. Data and studies from around the developed, post-industrial countries show that in any given year the majority of new jobs are created by a small number of fast growing – usually quite small – firms.

The combination of working with the final candidates for Governor, cataloguing the insights of key CEOs and reviewing all important reports compiled recently about states and how to become economically more competitive, should help the next administration make the state a stronger location for technology firms.
A report will be released by late September.

Thank You for Supporting: Angel Investment Tax Credit and Fund, Pre-Seed Center, Venture Capital

Dear Connecticut Technology Community leader,

I’m writing to give a well-earned thank you to those of you who helped on Friday with an email to your Connecticut legislators. Your support helped reinforce our position, and with a good discussion we had with legislators and staff we appear to have made it through the crucial Senate Finance committee.

As the legislative session continues, we’re hoping to be able to mobilize good grass roots company leader support at different times for positions that will be good for the Connecticut technology community. This will likely involve more such requests in the next two weeks to you for support. I hope that when you agree with our position you will take the small amount of time required to use our capwiz system to send out an email to your legislators. We’re only starting to explore the impact this may have, but ultimately the legislature wants to serve the expressed needs of its constituents, and so your reinforcement of specific positions is crucial to our success and also crucial to Connecticut’s success.

I think you will also find that your willingness to reach out and communicate with your representatives will serve two others good objectives:

1. it will help you get to know your legislators a little better, for your potential future interests, and
2. it will help your legislators get to know you a little better, which will also serve you while reinforcing Connecticut’s need to recognize that the State has a key interest in your ability to create new jobs.

Thank you.

Sincerely,
Matt Nemerson
The Connecticut Technology Council

Flashback: 
4/23/2010 - call for action to support: Angel Investment Tax Credit and Fund, Pre-Seed Center, Venture Capital

 

Innovation Matters - Economic Development is now a serious business

Matthew Nemerson's new post on his Innovation Matters blog focuses on Economic Development challenges in the state of Connecticut.  He tells us that "what we can do is think of economic development as an apolitical social good that must be mastered to maintain our way of life and the benefits that we take for granted."   Read the full article at: http://ct.typepad.com/innovation_matters/2009/10/economic-development-is-now-a-serious-business.html

New Year's Message from Matthew Nemerson

I  just spent a week in Washington DC.  The majesty of the place and the excitement of the upcoming inaugural, was enough to make me forget the economic malais that we all find ourselves in.  Coming face-to-face with the documents, icons and memorials of earlier challenges –  the resolve to fight England for our freedom, the horrors of a civil war, the decade-long great depression, the forty years in the nuclear cross-hairs of the cold war – reminded me that our nation’s greatest advances and leaders surfaced when we were pushed to seek extraordinary solutions to overwhelming problems.

The current challenges to global capitalism, to our standard of living and to our governments’ ability to raise sufficient funds to keep the public sector viable may not rise to the level of past American crises, but they will test our leaders.

The Connecticut Technology Council, with our clear-headed ideas about growth and innovation, our unabiding focus on the future of Connecticut and our access to a broad-based membership and to a remarkable board of volunteer directors will be an important player as institutions and individuals struggle to provide leadership in the coming year.
 
As the group speaking for 2,500+ technology-oriented firms and another 600 early-stage hopefuls, the Council can, and should, approach 2009 with optimism.  Capital markets and looming state and town deficits may have us on edge, but still, the global appetite for innovation and making goods better and cheaper is unabated, especially as billions strive to raise their standard of living.  Connecticut firms will be in that mix no matter what happens to the state budget come this June.

Today, there are many formal and ad hoc groups looking at what Connecticut should do this year.  As your advocate, we are part of many of these efforts. We will be inviting you to contribute to the solutions and approaches that will be explored. Remember, every state will be searching for a unique set of answers to what will bring prosperity back quickly. There is no reason Connecticut cannot do the best job.

In 2009, we will use the web better to get you information and to rally your support while respecting your time and need to concentrate on your businesses.  We will be a constant presence in educating government leaders on how to use incentives and build the kind of infrastructure that will grow the economy and create jobs while objecting to actions that will do the opposite.  We will continue to celebrate innovation, success and talent where we find it across the state. And we will actively work to attract and help the new firms that have best chance of becoming big successes someday.

Before we stretch and flex in preparation for the 2009 challenges, let’s look back and thank everyone who helped us in 2008. 

The Connecticut Technology Council produced over 60 events, recognized hundreds of companies and individuals, advocated for our industry and assisted more than 500 entrepreneurs.  Congratulations are due to the exceptional honorees of the Tech Top 40, IPA Awards, and Women of Innovation program. Our partners included the State of Connecticut, and also hundreds of sponsors and members.

Leadership has been abundant from our Board of Directors, growing technology social networks. On behalf of our staff, we thank everyone for supporting the Council and for helping to create the strength that comes from the unique American form of leadership and idea creation that comes from trade associations and the public/private collaborations we produce.

Let not forget that strong, vocal and thoughtful business associations are vital during times of rapid and re-orienting economic change when policies are set by the public sector.  Jobs will be created with more early-stage capital and incentives for first round funding sources. Smaller, more productive state and local government bureaucracies will have to emerge from our budget cuts. Funding for world-class infrastructure investments will need to be found.

Together we can find ways to make 2009 a year in which the technology and innovation community’s voice is heard loudly and helps influence the direction of Connecticut. 

Matthew Nemerson
President & CEO
Connecticut Technology Council
www.ct.org