Pioneering technology services focus of reunion
BYLINE: Jim Stafford, The Daily Oklahoman
Nov. 2--John Campbell experienced a nostalgic moment as he greeted Randall Goldsmith at Wednesday's session of the State Science and Technology Institute Conference at the Cox Convention Center.
Campbell is director of enterprise services for the nonprofit technology-based economic development corporation known as i2E, and was hired in 1998 by Goldsmith, the organization's first director.
Known in those days as the Oklahoma Technology Commercialization Center, i2E provides mentor services for tech-based start-up companies through a contract with the Oklahoma Center for the Advancement of Science and Technology.
It was a pioneering endeavor for Oklahoma, and the original group had no template by which to offer their services to entrepreneurs.
"That was so fun, to see if you could think up a solution to whatever the challenge was," Campbell said. "Randy was very innovative. He would take an idea and try it out. If it didn't work, he would trim it back and try it again a whole new way."
While i2E has grown into an Oklahoma success story that is widely seen as a model for similar tech-based economic development efforts in other states, the early days were trial-and-error, the former colleagues said.
"That was the beauty of an early stage start-up program, the application of creativity," Goldsmith said. "We literally were building it while we flew it."
Today, Goldsmith is working to build a similar success in Mississippi, where he was hired less than two months ago as president and chief executive officer of the Jackson-based Mississippi Technology Alliance. He worked in San Antonio after leaving the i2E job in 2002, and most recently was assistant vice president for technology and economic development at the University of Texas Health Science Center.
Oklahoma's influence in the world of tech-based economic development was apparent by the presence of 350 participants at the annual SSTI conference that concludes today at the Cox Center, Goldsmith said.
"I think without question that OCAST and i2E represent a 'best-practice' model," Goldsmith said. "I still emulate what we have done here. I did it at the community level in San Antonio and now intend to do it at the state level in Mississippi."
The Mississippi Technology Alliance will implement some of the same entrepreneurial training programs that Goldsmith designed while at i2E, he said.
He presented two sessions at the conference, including one that focused on what he called the "technology commercialization model, which is the basic architecture that OCAST used to create the Tech Center -- i2E."
Goldsmith's successor at i2E, current President and chief executive officer Greg Main, said the influence of his predecessor remains in the programs it uses to help Oklahoma entrepreneurs.
"Those have been mainstays of our operation ever since," Main said after greeting Goldsmith before the luncheon began.
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