Position statement:

Misalignment between technologically based projections and real business opportunities

Business is not made by technology, technology enables in some cases good business. There is no direct connection between good technology and good business.

My personal background is based on research, engineering management, entrepreneurship, mentoring, advising, and angel to high tech innovative startups. In the first part of my professional experience I always loved to participate to discussions on what would have been the next technological trend, the next killer application, the next technology that would have changed the world and, by definition, would have made the relevant design team famous and wealthy. Something changed in my perception of the link between technological trends and real business when the Apple iPod was put in the market, an incredibly commercially successful product, paving the way to a long list of people life-changing products, based on an “old” technology developed by a few companies and risking to be forgotten and left in the drawer forever. A technology that many technology gurus were considering already dead because not enough “nice and clean” and satisfying the beauty requirements of what should be a true novel and unique technology.

Since those times, having to deal more and more with technical people with entrepreneurial ambitions I discovered how often their personal and company goals were driven nearly exclusively by technological uniqueness or presumed so much more than by market sense and potential customer need.

Consumers do not buy technologies, they do not buy technology platforms, they try to solve a personal need or expand a personal dream. I believe that also in current days it still exists a strong misalignment between technology people and design teams, basically those entitled to develop and create new technological trends, and the final market. The result of this misalignment is that an incredible number of resources is devoted and spent on technology developments and design activities that will never be converted or give birth to sellable products, social wealth and job generating opportunities. Research centers chests of drawers are full of research projects that will never go anywhere and that since the very beginning would have been stopped if a more accurate filter had been applied in selecting those developments with higher follow up probability.

In well-managed high tech companies, product developments are driven my market opportunity, why this is not happening as well in public R&D centers?

It is rather easy to convert good money into good research, it is much more difficult to convert good research into good money, meaning newco’s, new jobs and new business opportunities.

So what can be done?

I do not have of course the magic solution but in my last several years having to deal with University spinoff or technology transfer programs I matured a number of considerations:

1.    close or strongly reduce the large existing gap between research and market deployment both in terms of teaching requirements, personal development and transfer of basic market and business rules to emerging research and design engineers;

2.    build product manufacturing experience, very often products do not find a market path due to too high or difficult, at the end too expensive, manufacturing requirements;

3.    develop and promote cost sensitivity in research engineers; too often research engineers and managers are used to ask for money for their own research activity as if money would be a "done deal”, a “given” that needs, under any circumstances to be spent for the technology development as if development of something would be the only reason why spending it; this attitude, built over several years of research work, is so deeply embedded in research teams that ends up limiting the birth and development of new enterprises;

4.    identify, facilitate and develop entrepreneurial skills in our students and research teams, this being overall the very first missing skill in our technical people, specifically in Europe. They are not or too rarely with the right entrepreneurial skill and risk taking attitude.

I am always very sorry to see that the technical startup founders are sooner or later, typically sooner, put apart by investors and substituted by more market driven skilled people; this may eventually happen but should not be the basic rule as often it is today.

About the panel member:

Massimo Vanzi is a highly experienced manager with over 38 years of experience in the semiconductor and ICT industries. After earning his Dr. Eng. degree in electronics in 1976 from the University of Genoa (Italy) and his Master’s of Science degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science in 1979 from Stanford University, Massimo worked with Signetics, Innovative Silicon Technology and STMicroelectronics. In 1993 Massimo founded Accent. As Accent CEO Massimo transformed a small startup of five engineers into the leader IC design and fabless ASIC Company in Europe and one of top 5 in the world. In 2009 Massimo leaves the CEO role in Accent, while remaining a shareholder, and starts working as advisor to SME and innovative technology startups. Since then he became shareholder and co- founder of more than 10 technology startups in Sophia Antipolis, Lousanne, Milano, Bologna, Padova, Udine, Genova, Cosenza and Torino; he is a co- founder of Genova High Tech SpA, senior advisor / mentor of more than 10 high-tech startups and SME; senior member of Italian Angels for Growth (IAG), the primary Italian business angel network. He participates as a jury member to many startup contests and as an invited lecturer to several university courses on startup business. He is advisor for startup entrepreneurial model to Genoa University, has been advisor on Technology Transfer to EPFL, Ecole Polytechnique Federal de Lausanne and Bologna University. He is member of the Scientific Committee of ISICT in Genoa and has been member of the Scientific Committee of the Swiss Center for Electronics and Microtechnologies (CSEM) of Neuchatel.

Dr. Vanzi is a fine art photographer (www.massimovanzi.eu), member of the Rotary Club Monza Est and member of the Management Board of the Stanford Alumni Club of Italy.