USC's New Institute for Innovation

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But this is not just about commercialization—as I say, it's about getting ideas out into society. So we might work with a startup, or a nonprofit, or a Web site, or a community. We're exploring to see if there is a way to make a social impact outside of the traditional venture-backed startup. That model will be a very big part of what we do, but we also want to explore to see if there might be a way to work outside of those traditional models.

How has your time at the Deshpande Center affected your approach here?

I learned a lot while I was there. But at USC Stevens, we're really focusing on taking an integrated approach that will do more than just give out grants. We're pretty much revamping the whole operation to focus on how to support the innovator, because one of the things that I learned at MIT was it's not just about the money. It's about empowering the innovators and getting them connected with the right people—and creating a community from within and also outside the university with experts from business. It's about having a shared sense of enterprise.

Who have you been working with to date?

We're working closely with angel investors and VCs here and in the Bay Area. We're also doing outreach within the university and talking to students and faculty in the different schools. My background is as an engineer and an entrepreneur, so I understand what it takes to take a technology and commercialize it, but what's really unique here is our opportunity to reach out to the fine arts school or the music school and try to figure out how to work together with all these folks. That's what's so cool about innovation; it's the common language between academia and the marketplace.

It seems like at other schools, there's a pretty big divide between the entrepreneurship centers that are more student-focused and the tech-transfer offices that are more faculty-focused.

We're doing it in an integrated fashion. So we do have a top entrepreneurship center here, which is fantastic. But we're trying to reach across the whole university, not to segregate students or faculty but to make them all a part of one central hub. When I speak with angel investors, VCs, or entrepreneurs and corporations that want to learn more, a common problem is they don't know where to start. We provide that starting place.

Tech transfer has certainly been profitable for universities. Why is it important to broaden your innovation strategy beyond this?

Stanford made a killing on Google, and all the universities want to do the same thing, but the problem is that that's the wrong reason to do anything. Stanford didn't do it because they wanted to make money. I think that to be successful, you can't be greedy, and by focusing only on the potential financial gains, you end up becoming difficult to work with. Our goal here is to help these ideas get out. Obviously, we want to get a fair return on the investment that we've put into them, but that's not going to be our primary focus.

What other benefits do you see coming from USC Stevens?

Well, it's also an effective recruiting tool. We want to be seen as a place that attracts the most innovative faculty and students. The salaries and benefits are so high in the private sector—especially within life sciences—that without this, I think that some of the best faculty might get lured away.

What has been the student response so far?

We're in the process of doing a student/faculty survey, and while we don't have the final results yet so I can't speak to the figures exactly, close to half the students say that they have had an idea while they're at university that they thought would make a good business—that they would love to have some help with. That number was staggering to me. It's exciting to have such enterprising students.

Click here to view a slide show of designs from the exhibit.

With Helen Walters in New York.