(San Diego Daily Transcript, April 3, 2015) – If you’ve been on the hunt for a promising technology to capitalize on, or want to launch your own startup company — and really, who in San Diego hasn’t? — you’re in luck.
In response to a 2011 Presidential Memorandum instructing the Department of Defense to come up with savvier technology transfer, SPAWAR Systems Center Pacific has teamed up with Arizona State University.
The result is the San Diego Furnace Technology Accelerator site, and about 70 of SPAWAR’s licensable patented technologies are up for grabs.
ASU was awarded a $1 million Defense Department grant in January 2014 to help the department’s research and development labs transition their many technologies into the commercial sphere. The Furnace method, established in Arizona in 2012, gives regional entrepreneurs greater access to intellectual property.
“The goal was to apply the same open innovation philosophy and methods that ASU has been operating on locally to DoD intellectual property and establish three cohorts of startup companies based on those technologies,” said Mitzi Montoya, vice president and university dean of entrepreneurship and innovation at ASU.
“SPAWAR is a giant in terms of cutting-edge research, development and implementation,” she said. “It has been the launch pad for numerous disruptive innovations. A partnership with SPAWAR, which is already a major contributor to the growing city of San Diego and its innovation economy, is exactly the kind of strategic, collaborative initiative that ASU’s Furnace hopes to initiate and implement to have a lasting impact on regional growth.”