A sea change at the Labs - Sandia National Laboratories; Los Alamos National Laboratory - Special Report: Science, Technology & Economic Development

Sandia: A new approach to partnerships

Partnering with industry, universities, and other federal laboratories is how Sandia National Laboratories does business now and will continue to do business in the future. One of Sandia's eight strategic objectives states that "we will successfully use strategic partnerships in pursuing our missions?'

Since 1991 when Sandia began implementing the National Competitiveness Technology Transfer Act of 1989, which charged Sandia and other national defense laboratories with helping to bolster America's competitiveness in the world marketplace by sharing technical expertise and resources with U.S. industry, Sandia has learned that teamwork with industry is a smart business practice. Cost-shared partnerships allow both participants to benefit: Sandia is able to capitalize on advances made by its industrial partners to help accomplish its Department of Energy mission responsibilities, and industry gains access to Sandia's world-class scientific/engineering expertise, technologies and facilities to help it acquire the technological superiority to compete successfully in global markets.

Through our participation in many hundreds of collaborative projects - with both large and small companies, nationally and locally - we are also learning to be more strategic in our partnering. That is, we are seeking to establish longer-term partnerships that will allow us to learn better how to use each others' strengths to mutual advantage, to understand each others' goals and drivers - and thus how to work even more effectively together to achieve our respective goals.

These kinds of relationships, we believe, are best developed when the partners arc co-located. While we have always encouraged personnel exchanges - arrangements in which Sandia staff work on-site at a partner's facility or the partner's staff work on-site at Sandia - we have recently begun to encourage our industrial partners to establish R&D capabilities near Sandia. Such proximity and long-term association would enable us to work together even more effectively and efficiently.

We continue to believe that partnering makes sense on the local level as surely as it does on the national level - and for similar reasons: it's good business practice and can be instrumental in promoting regional economic development. Sandia, therefore, does not restrict its partnering activities to large national and multinational companies.

At the end of 1996, for example, we had participated in 47 cost-shared cooperative research and development projects with New Mexico companies, licensed 45 Sandia-developed technologies, and signed 33 user-facility agreements that opened many of Sandia's unique facilities and associated equipment to the technical personnel of New Mexico companies.

In 1991 we initiated a technical assistance program that enables a broad spectrum of New Mexico manufacturing firms, R&D companies, and scientific organizations to draw on the scientific and technical expertise of Sandia to help solve technology-based problems (as long as the assistance does not compete with services readily available in the private sector). We have participated in 357 technical assistance projects with New Mexico companies. Results of these projects range from enabling a company to enter international markets with a new product to helping a company meet the technical requirements of an $8 million contract with the Army that was in danger of being canceled for non-compliance. Many companies have expanded their operations and hired additional employees as a result of partnering with Sandia in technical assistance projects.

In addition to providing technical assistance to existing New Mexico companies, Sandia encourages the formation of new businesses based on Sandia's technologies.

Two and a half years ago, Sandia initiated a new ventures program to encourage Sandia scientists and engineers to take entrepreneurial leave to start new businesses based on Sandia-developed technologies. So far, 22 start-up companies have been established in New Mexico through this program. Technology Ventures Corporation (established in 1993 by Sandia's parent company, Lockheed Martin, to assist the formation of new companies) has supported many of these entrepreneurs, raising $25 million of investment capital, thereby helping to create more than 500 new high-tech jobs.

While Sandia's goal for co-location of industrial partners is directly related to our desire to achieve our DOE mission responsibilities better and faster, while saving taxpayer-supplied research dollars, co-location complements the goal of economic development organizations working to attract new high-tech businesses and industry to New Mexico in the hope of making Albuquerque the next "Silicon Valley" or "Route 128."

Given the complementary nature of our respective goals, it makes sense for Sandia to work in concert with state and local economic development organizations to encourage the establishment of industrial R&D facilities in Albuquerque. Granted, our respective strengths and talents, as well as the roles we play in the effort, may be very different - but they are also very complementary.

By combining our respective strengths, Sandia and New Mexico's economic development organizations can work together to achieve our respective goals. To be successful, we must learn to use each others' strengths to mutual advantage and to understand each others' goals and drivers. In short, just as we seek to become more strategic with our industry partners, we must work strategically with our economic development partners.

Together, we can define a strategy that will work in this community. Whether that strategy involves creating organizations like Germany's Fraunhofer institutes, more familiar research parks or industry clusters like those of some of our neighboring states, or seek some all together different solution remains to be determined. Whatever vision we define and choose to work toward, we will achieve it only by working together.

SANDIA INFORMATION

For more information about partnerships and commercialization at Sandia, please call (505) 271-7813

LANL: Building high-tech businesses

Los Alamos National Laboratory has established a new office that will focus on helping entrepreneurs create new startup businesses based on Laboratory-developed technologies. A component of the Industrial Partnership Office, the Technology Commercialization Office (TCO) will conduct the following activities:

* Identify Laboratory-developed technologies with the highest commercial potential.

* Develop market assessments and commercialization plans.

* Provide assistance in the business formation of companies.

* Identify sources of investment capital.

* Conduct entrepreneurship workshops.

* Forge relationships between regional entrepreneurs, investment capital providers and private business consultants.

We will focus on building high-tech businesses that create jobs and generate revenue flow in Northern New Mexico. TCO will work closely with city and county. governments, economic development agencies, chambers of commerce and the regional business support infrastructure to establish a climate that supports new businesses.

Los Alamos created this new office in response to community input, which stipulated that the University of California, which manages the Lab, and Los Alamos should become more involved in growing and diversifying the economy of Northern New Mexico. TCO will initially focus on the Laboratory's work in applications software, biosciences technology, materials and sensors.

TCO has already started to fulfill its mission. For example, TCO has initiated an expanded entrepreneurial initiative that includes training, as well as an entrepreneurial leave program and associated support. TCO has also sponsored entrepreneurial and business training workshops for regional business people and Laboratory would-be entrepreneurs.

In February 1997, Los Alamos hosted Financing High-Tech Ventures, one such entrepreneurial training workshop. More than 100 attendees participated. Of these participants, 61 were from the local community and 50 were from the Laboratory. Lab participants represented 15 technical divisions - quite a variety of disciplines and specialties.

The Laboratory recently launched a research/development equipment loan program to assist New Mexico small businesses. This program enables small businesses to borrow Laboratory, equipment for up to three months. TCO's goal for 1997 is to help launch three or more new spin-off, startup companies, with an emphasis on ventures resident in Northern New Mexico.

For the past two years the Laboratory has worked to foster economic vitality and diversity in Northern New Mexico. Another component of the Industrial Partnership Office, the Small Business Initiative, has ensured that the region benefits from the brain power available at Los Alamos. This program has supplied the resources to help existing companies mature and commercialize Laboratory-developed technologies. Following an annual open competition, approximately 10 cooperative research and development agreements involving technology maturation and small businesses have been funded each of the last two years.

Another way companies can work with Los Alamos is through its Technical Assistance Program. Operated under the Defense Partnership component of the Industrial Partnership Office, this program provides companies with up to $5,000-worth of technical assistance in the form of a Laboratory technical staff member. Small businesses may compete for one assistance per year free of charge.

In 1996, Los Alamos executed 38 such projects; so far in 1997, the Laboratory has established 23 projects. This program requires that the work must not compete with industry. In other words, if a company in the United States can provide similar assistance, Los Alamos cannot help. However, if the problem is unique, Los Alamos can provide assistance.

The traditional form of agreement between the Laboratory and industry is the cooperative research and development agreement (CRADA). During the first half of 1996, Los Alamos executed 21 such agreements with a total value of $58 million. Moreover, companies continue to return for more work. In 1996, 16 percent of all Los Alamos partners entered into more than one CRADA with the Laboratory, with some partners entering into as many as nine separate CRADAs.

Another popular form of interaction with industry is the Laboratory's Personnel Exchange Program. These agreements enable government and Laboratory staff to work in industry facilities; it also enables industry personnel to work in government laboratories and facilities. In 1995, Los Alamos executed 40 such agreements with a number of companies, from large corporations such as DuPont and Dow Chemical to small companies such as SciBus Analytical, Inc.

In many cases, industry does not have the resources or funds to build large, research-quality laboratories and testing facilities. Los Alamos has in place User Facility Agreements that enable companies to take advantage of more than 50 Los Alamos facilities.

The various offices with the Industrial Partnership Office continue to help companies throughout the United States and specifically in New Mexico. For example, Los Alamos is working with Energy Related Devices, Inc., to test a high-energy, miniature fuel cell technology. The CEO of this company is a Laboratory employee on leave of absence. The end-result of this work will be a fuel cell that can be used in the cellular telephone industry.

Los Alamos is involved in a collaborative project to develop and demonstrate a graffiti removal reactor, which is based on a Laboratory-developed technology. In addition to the City of Albuquerque and the Graffiti Institute of North America, Los Alamos is working with AtmoPlaz, Inc., a small business owned and managed out of Corrales. Known as an atmospheric pressure plasma jet, this new device combines non-thermal, low-pressure plasma with high-pressure plasma discharges. AtmoPlaz plans to build a new production facility for these devices in Espanole.

The Laboratory's Industrial Partnership Office serves as a single point-of-contact for industrial collaborations between U.S. companies and the Laboratory's scientific and technical resources. Its role is to promote and coordinate the sharing that lies at the base of successful industrial collaborations - the sharing of employees, equipment, expertise and technologies.

LANL Information

For more information regarding industrial collaborations and partnerships, please call 505-665-9090. For information about TCO or to discuss an entrepreneurial project, please ask for Dave Foster. For information about the Small Business Initiative, ask for Sue Fenimore. If you are interested in receiving technical assistance from the Laboratory, please ask for Christine Trigg.

Warren Siemens is Director; Technology Partnerships and Commercialization Center, Sandia National Laboratories.

John Russell is chief of staff, Industrial Partnership Office, Los Alamos National Laboratory.

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