News Updates

Texas technology expert sees El Paso's potential

By Vic Kolenc / El Paso Times
Posted: 08/26/2009 12:00:00 AM MDT

Original Article

EL PASO -- David Nance, head of a new Texas nonprofit group in Austin aimed at turning innovative technologies into Texas businesses, likes what he saw in El Paso during a two-day, fact-finding visit.

"My conclusion is this region has a lot of assets that are under-appreciated," Nance, 57, executive chairman of the Innovate Texas Foundation, said in an interview Tuesday morning after meetings with community leaders and University of Texas at El Paso officials. He also met with officials at the new Texas Tech University medical school in El Paso Tuesday afternoon.

El Paso has water desalination expertise, solar power potential, and a border location that could be tapped into by universities and companies throughout the state to develop new technologies and create or expand companies, Nance said.

What the state needs, and the foundation will promote, is forming statewide collaborations among universities, entrepreneurs, and companies that can harness resources from various areas of the state to develop technologies and create companies, Nance said.

Much of the state's innovation work in the past has been too regionalized, Nance said.

"Regional competitiveness has retarded the state," he said.

K. Alan Kirchhoff, director of the Texas Emerging Technology Fund, said the technology fund, which has invested $300 million in state money in 24 university projects and 100-plus companies so far, has provided a spark for innovation.

But "now we have to develop and market to the world," and that's what Innovate Texas can provide, Kirchhoff said.

The fund currently has $200 million to invest in high-tech companies.

"El Paso and other communities are marketing their communities, but in a global market," and with competition from the well-established "innovation ecosystems" on the East and West coasts, Texas has to do a better job of connecting companies, entrepreneurs and universities, and do a better job of marketing to the world, Kirchhoff said.

"The future of economic development is to take knowledge and transfer it to products or services, and grow it in (a) region," Kirchhoff said.

Bob Cook, president of the El Paso Regional Economic Development Corp., or REDCo, El Paso's industrial recruiter, said Innovate Texas may be able to provide El Paso with the information and assistance needed to bring "high-value, high-tech" companies to this area.

"I'm encouraged by what I heard" from Nance, but "we still have a lot of work to make sure we're linked in with that statewide effort," Cook said.

El Paso businessman Larry Peterson, a co-founder of the Camino Real Angels, an El Paso group which invests in startup companies, said El Paso has not learned how to "harness the power of innovation" to help this area grow and prosper as have some other areas of the state. Peterson said he's been involved in various high-tech startup initiatives in Texas, and Innovate Texas "is the best effort (so far) to help the entire state prosper."

Peterson is chairman of Innovate Texas' Competitiveness Initiatives Committee, one of 18 committees established by the foundation.

Innovate Texas was formed after Texas Gov. Rick Perry's Competitiveness Council recommended that a statewide foundation was needed to coordinate and connect clusters of innovation across Texas.

Nance is an Austin entrepreneur who founded or co-founded several firms active in technology development and technology investment, according to information from the foundation.

He co-founded Introgen Therapeutics with the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in 1993. That company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization late last year after its application to market a cancer drug was rejected by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. It's in the process of liquidating its assets, according to a letter to shareholders on its Web site.

Nance also was managing partner of Texas Biomedical Development Partners, a health-care investment and management firm, according to the foundation.

Vic Kolenc may be reached at vkolenc@elpasotimes.com; 546-6421.