This is very cool. University of Wisconsin Chancellor David Ward just released a comprehensive plan for better integrating the UW's rich knowledge base into economic development opportunities among other worthy goals.
It is a campus wide initiative that is intended to last for years. It's an approach for dealing with budgets, funding, and creating new opportunities on a sustainable basis.
"EI is intended to be campuswide -- within and across programs, departments, colleges and centers -- and will be supported by new and streamlined policies and practices. EI cannot, and should not, be an initiative primarily funded centrally, as new funding must be derived from reallocations or new program revenues. New revenues and savings derived from innovations will flow back to the units creating them. Overall, these changes may encourage and leverage significant external support, and changes of this kind may be the only strategy to argue for future increments in state support and more flexible need-based tuition policies."
The photo above has deep UW Madison innovation cred. This industrial fluid recycling system derived from several of our patents. I was able to test our system in the University of Wisconsin's chemical engineering lab. Thanks to valuable, informal help from the UW ChemE engineering faculty (thank you, Juan!) and information their students provided through tests that I could never have run myself - this innovation received the Wisconsin Governor's New Product of the Year award in 2004 (Best of State), and the United States Small Business New Product of the Year Award from the National Society of Professional Engineers in 2005.
We not only built our business around this kind of support, we manufactured much of what we did right in Dane County, home of the UW Madison. We exported these systems across the United States and to great customers on 5 continents.
Not every UW initiative will flourish, but the process of engaging the business and entrepreneurship community will create the kind of partnerships that will generate jobs, growth, and revenue for the community and for the UW System.
Our University of Wisconsin rocks. Chancellor Ward is steering our wonderful, globally relevant, vibrant community institution into turbulent tides. Great ideas and directions. Thank you!
Educational Innovation: An invitation to participate. UW Chancellor Ward's call to action. Jan. 27, 2012.
Good recent article about Chancellor Ward's call for the University of Wisconsin to become more entrepreneurial
UW research budget via Wikipedia: In 2010, the University of Wisconsin had research expenditures of more than 1 billion dollars.
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