The Innovation Institute celebrated its 13th Annual Celebration of Innovation this week. (Read a recap here.) In his welcoming remarks, Pitt's Senior Vice Chancellor for Research Rob Rutenbar discussed how Pittsburgh will move past the disappointment (or relief) of not being selected for Amazon's next headquarters by continuing to organically build on its strengths.
A few weeks ago, we got the news that Pittsburgh was among the finalist cities that were passed over for Amazon’s second, and as it turns out, third headquarters.
This concluded a year-long contest of sorts that ended with Amazon selecting sites in two of the largest metropolitan areas in the nation, one of which, quite coincidentally, is where Amazon’s CEO lives. Who didn’t see that coming?
Simply being selected as one of the 20 finalist cities was a feather in our collective cap and yet another proof point that Pittsburgh, which emerged as ground zero of the industrial age over a century ago, has claimed a prominent seat at the table in the information age. It was one of the reasons that the technology publication GeekWire came to Pittsburgh last February as its second headquarters for a full month to chronicle the city’s latest renaissance.
Landing Amazon would obviously have provided a huge jolt to the region’s economic development efforts. But from the beginning it was a long shot, and could have created as many challenges as benefits.
Over the past 40 years, our region has slowly been transforming itself from heavy industry to the innovation economy. With Pitt, CMU and UPMC providing the kindling, we have been adding larger pieces of wood to the fire by attracting research and development divisions for Google, Facebook, and Philips, Uber and Ford, with Argo AI, to name just a few. Landing Amazon would have been like pouring gasoline on that fire, causing it to burn hotter, but also more quickly consuming the available resources to sustain it, potentially to the detriment of the existing ecosystem.
Pittsburgh does not need Amazon to continue on its rise as hub of global innovation. It has long been the place where discovery and tenacity flow together to create innovation like the Allegheny and the Mon converge to create the Ohio. Rather than waiting for a white knight to come riding in, we need to be in the business of creating the next Amazons in the areas where we are strong: life sciences, healthcare IT, artificial intelligence, advanced manufacturing and robotics.
The Amazon experience and last year’s Brooking’s Institute study remind us that our fate is up to us to determine, and there are concrete things we need to be doing to accelerate our progress.
The report urges us to build Pittsburgh innovation clusters in advanced manufacturing, life sciences and autonomous systems. Physically, the Oakland Innovation District is taking shape to accommodate new innovation. The Innovation District is an area less than two square miles that represents more than a third of Pennsylvania’s university research output. You can expect to see a lot of construction activity over the next several years as new space is created for labs, incubators and industry and nonprofit partners is built out.
Among the exciting new developments for Pitt is the Immune Transplant and Therapy Center – ITTC-- which,
with $200 million in investment from UPMC, is driving Pitt’s contribution to one of the most promising new
approaches to treating cancer and other diseases with personalized medicine. Building on the legacy of Salk, Youngner, Starzl and others, these new therapies unlocks the power of the immune system. Plus, an additional $2.2 billion will be spent locally on the creation of 3 new hospitals within this Innovation district – one of the largest healthcare infrastructure investments in the US.
The Brookings report noted that while Pittsburgh has proven to have the capacity to generate startups, it must
take the next step to building and sustaining high growth startups that create large numbers of jobs. To create high growth startups in the life sciences sector, the report recommended that we have stronger support mechanisms around research entrepreneurs and places and spaces to grow and attract world class startups. Our
partnership with UPMC and ITTC represents one step in this direction. We have partnered with Wexford Science
and Technology to redevelop the former Ford building at 5000 Baum into over 100,000 sq feet of hybrid lab and
office space, available to both academic research and commercial startup activities.
The report also pointed out the need to address skills gaps for the regional workforce. To address this Pitt
opened the first of what will be several Community Engagement Centers last month in Homewood that
includes classrooms and computer labs and other resources for career development. The Innovation
Institute’s Institute for Entrepreneurial Excellence is providing business development consultation from the
center.
Tonight we are celebrating those Pitt faculty, staff, students who are growing our innovation and
entrepreneurship ecosystem from within; who are pushing the boundaries of scientific discovery and then
asking how those discoveries might benefit the world by being translated into products and services that improve our lives while also creating economic opportunity. We are also celebrating those partners that are aiding in that mission, including those who volunteer their time to help our innovation teams navigate the often foreign landscape of commercialization.
As our results clearly demonstrate, we are gaining momentum. Many of you here tonight are among those
making it happen. Pitt set a new record for licenses of its intellectual property in fiscal year 2018 with 162, and
once again established a new high water mark for the number of invention disclosures submitted, which are now
coming in to the Innovation Institute at a rate of one a day. Another sign of our progress is that Pitt saw its ranking for issued patents among university’s worldwide rise to #27 from #35 last year.
Aided in part by new programs and new university policies to make it easier for faculty to take on roles in new
companies, a record 23 startups were launched from Pitt last year. Four years ago that number was 6. Over the last 5 years, only a handful of other individual universities have spun out that many companies in a single year.
One of those faculty is Stephen Badylak, who is being honored tonight with the Innovation Institute’s Marlin
Mickle Outstanding Innovator Award. Dr. Badylak has taken the role of chief scientific officer in the new
company, ECM Therapeutics, which has licensed a bundle of intellectual property from his lab centered on creating biological scaffolds that form a natural framework on which tissues can regenerate, potentially revolutionizing the way several conditions and diseases are treated.
Student entrepreneurship is also growing rapidly at Pitt where nearly 1600 students participated in Innovation
Institute programming last year. Through the generosity of a $2 million seed gift from Pitt trustee Bob Randall and his family, the new Big Idea Center for student entrepreneurship was created at the Innovation Institute.
Last year’s Randall Family Big Idea competition was the largest in its 10 year history with more than 300 students from across the university participating.
The winner of that competition, Four Growers, which is being honored tonight as the student innovators of the year, went on to be Pitt’s first team to be selected to compete in the Rice Business Plan Competition. They also took second place in the ACC InVenture Prize competition and were accepted into Y Combinator, considered the world’s most prestigious startup accelerator.
So while we didn’t win the Amazon lottery, we can feel good about the progress that we are contributing to, and
take a moment to celebrate as we are doing tonight.