At the recent Xconomy Summit on Innovation, Technology, and Entrepreneurship, the tag line was “The recovery starts here.” And for the day, for some 400-plus attendees, the recovery did in fact feel like it had started.
But to balance out the uplifting talk by Dean Kamen (see here for MassDevice’s coverage of his amazing ability to get engineers and other technical people excited), there was a sobering reality check from Juan Enriquez (see here for one of his several speeches on TED).
So, did the recovery really start at the copnference? After a year or two of nothing, has the ability of innovators to move their ideas toward commercialization returned?
I have 12 pages of notes that say the answer is yes. The idea is that the start of recovery is the point where good news finally offsets bad news. If this is the start of recovery, there must be companies like Terrafugia and its Jetsons-esque roadable aircraft (flying cars to you and me).
More down-to-earth, but no less revolutionary, is Taris Biomedical’s technology as described now that they’re out of stealth mode. The technology is an osmotic pump that can be introduced into the bladder via catheter. The idea is to slowly elute medicine over the course of many days rather than the current treatment which is a single shot of meds every day or two.
Another example of good news was the dual descriptions of mentorship opportunities: Vinit Nijhawan and Boston University’s nascent program and Dean Kamen’s 17 years with FIRST.
But these feel-good items were tempered by other, less positive news (interestingly clustered around the VCs). Specifically, Enriquez provided a sobering look at how deeply the economy is in trouble (e.g., the U.S. debt is now four times the GDP). He offered a look at the sorts of cuts we will all likely experience (assuming President Barack Obama doesn’t opt for hyper-inflation and turn to the money-printing presses as a solution): Capped healthcare spending; requiring people to work longer to qualify for Social Security; reduced military spending; selective budget cuts; and limiting borrowing.
Kamen also covered some of his less-successful pursuits (e.g., iBot). His description of the reason for the almost non-existent adoption of this nifty wheelchair technology (that spawned the Segway)? CMS was unwilling to reimburse for this product any more than it would for a standard motorized wheelchair.
Juan touched on this problem when he repeated the Excel Medical Ventures mantra: “Healthcare innovations must be better and cheaper.” A robotic wheelchair that gives persons with disabilities the dignity of being able to “stand” at eye level and the mobility to navigate stairs probably won’t gain traction in the marketplace if it costs four or five times as much as current technology.
Other less-positive news at the conference came during one of the panel discussions, “Investor Chat: Innovating Early Stage Venture.” With several luminaries of the VC world, including NVCA Chairman Michael Greely as moderator, the discussion bounced around from the fundraising environment (consensus: difficult) to potentially decreased appetite for risk (universally dismissed) to entrepreneurial failure (okay, but must go “full-in”) to tension between VCs and entrepreneurs (extreme uncertainty creates differences of style). At times, panel members were upbeat, but as I sat in the audience it felt like they were whistling past the graveyard.
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