The Hawai‘i Innovation Initiative

INNOVATION

UH Research’s Role in Diversifying Hawai‘i’s Economy

The news of the shutdown of Hawai‘i’s last sugar operation on Maui earlier this year marked the final chapter of a once booming plantation agricultural industry spearheaded by pineapple and sugar. 

With the decline of big agriculture, the Hawai‘i economy has become increasingly dependent on the tourism sector and on military spending. However, Hawai‘i is now facing increased competition from other world vacation destinations, while the large military presence and related spending in the state is significantly impacted by policy and budget decisions in Washington, D.C.

San Diego faced a similar situation in the 1960s, as it found economic and job growth constrained by an economy primarily based on tourism and the military. However, by bringing together the private sector, government and academia, and by leveraging UC San Diego research in the 1980s, the city was able to create a thriving tech-based economy that has produced a gross domestic product that currently hovers around $218 billion—of which about 12 percent is attributed to its research and technology industries. Comparatively, Hawai‘i’s related industries account for only about three percent of the economy.

Recognizing that a similar economic turnaround is vital for Hawai‘i and buoyed by San Diego’s success, the University of Hawai‘i (UH) and the Hawai‘i business community have partnered on the Hawai‘i Innovation Initiative—a bold and proactive effort to help diversify the state’s economy by building a thriving $1 billion innovation, research, education and training enterprise by 2025. As the largest research enterprise in the state, bringing in $425 million in extramural research funding last year, UH is essential to achieving his goal.

To do so, UH is currently engaged in number of focused efforts to aggressively commercialize its research, including accelerator programs, creating new innovation infrastructure, streamlining its research operations and employing top researchers in several innovation focus areas. On point for the university on this initiative is UH Vice President for Research and Innovation Vassilis L. Syrmos.

“The University of Hawai‘i has always been known for its world-class research,” said Syrmos. “Now, what we are doing differently is educating our faculty and students on entrepreneurship, providing them with the necessary tools and created an entrepreneurial ecosystem to help bring those technologies and break-through innovations to market.”

Although UH is a primary driver of the initiative, it joined forces with the Hawai‘i Business Roundtable (HBR) to help it leverage vital support from the public and private sectors to help link investors, entrepreneurs and companies with resources to develop UH innovations and technologies into viable businesses. The Hawai‘i Business Roundtable is statewide public policy organization made up of CEOs and senior executive of companies headquartered or maintaining significant operations in Hawai‘i.

“The local business community has long recognized that research and innovation need to be a part of Hawai‘i’s future,” said Gary Kai, executive director of the Hawai‘i Business Roundtable. “We believe that the Hawai‘i Innovation Initiative can be successful because of our great university and the quality of its cutting-edge research in many different areas.”  

The Hawai‘i Innovation Initiative is beginning to taking root at University of Hawai‘i and within the Hawai‘i business community. Initial success stories include:

  • XLR8UH Launched in 2014, XLR8UH is one of the first public university investment programs in the nation, revolutionizing the way innovation is commercialized at universities. The UH proof of concept center/venture accelerator has developed 15 companies that employ currently 67 individuals, generated over $600,000 in revenue and raised $7.8 million in total funding.  
  • MAUI FOOD INNOVATION CENTER  A program of UH Maui College,  the Maui Food Innovation Center (MFIC) provides business and tech-nological expertise to food and agricultural entrepreneurs across the state. MFIC assists farmers and food manufacturers increase profitability through the development of new value-added food products, reduces the state’s dependence on imports and contributes to the sustainability of Hawai‘i-based agriculture. 
  • SBA RECOGNITION Last October, XLR8UH and MFIC were both recognized by the U.S. Small Business Administration as two of the nation’s elite programs in their annual Growth Accelerator Fund Competition. Both were awarded $50,000. 
  • FUTURE FOCUS: UH/HBR INNOVATION AND TECHNOLOGY CONFERENCE Last September, the Hawai‘i Innovation Initiative held its inaugural conference that focused on energy, cybersecurity and entrepreneurship that featured some of the nation’s top experts in those fields. Over 200 participants were in attendance, including representatives from the local government, business, innovation and research communities. Future conferences are expected to feature other areas of UH research and innovation excellence. 
  • UH i-LAB Launched in February at UH Mānoa, the i-Lab design is inspired by elements of Stanford’s D.School and provides a cutting-edge workspace for students in multiple disciplines to turn design concepts into working models. 
  • 2016 AUTM WESTERN REGION MEETING The University of Hawai‘i was successful in its efforts to bring the 2016 Association of University Technology Managers (AUTM) Western Region Meeting to Honolulu this November. AUTM’s primary mission is to support and advance academic technology transfer globally, and its 3,200 members represent managers of intellectual property from more than 300 universities, research institutions, teaching hospitals and a number of business and government organizations. UH’s Office of Technology Transfer and Economic Development (OTTED) will be working closely with the AUTM organizers on the four-day conference.
  • STRATEGIC HIRES In 2014, UH recruited Edward DeLong as its first hire of the Hawai‘i Innovation Initiative. DeLong, a member of the National Academy of Sciences and a former professor of biological engineering at MIT, is co-director and research coordinator at the world-renowned C-MORE at UH Mānoa. In the same year, UH and the Hawai‘i Innovation Initiative received another boost with the hiring of Jason Leigh, a visualization expert and professor of computer science. Leigh, who was the director of the Electronic Visualization Lab and Software Technologies Research Center at the University of Illinois at Chicago, recently established the Laboratory for Advance Visualization and Applications (LAVA) at UH Mānoa and is currently working to develop the best data visualization system in the U.S.—known as the Cyber-enabled Collaboration Analysis Navigation and Observation Environment (CyberCANOE). Creating synergies in this area, UH Information Technology Services recruited its first Director of Cyberinfrastructure, Gwen Jacobs, to lead support activities of high performance computing and related “big data” techniques for researchers. She is already a PI and co-PI on several large grants and was recently named to the National Science Foundation’s Advisory Committee for Cyberinfrastructure.

“This economy right now is dependent on two sectors that are largely outside of our control: tourism and military spending,” said David Lassner, UH president. “There is now a real appreciation around the state of the need to develop a third, strong economic sector around innovation and research. We need to be the anchor, but we must also work hand in hand with the local business community and government to ensure the sector can flourish to create economic dynamism and great jobs across Hawai‘i.”