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Friday, December 19, 2008
Looking ahead: Sector by sector surveys of the landscape ahead
What would you ask Barack Obama?
By Mass High Tech staff
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As President-elect Barack Obama nears his inauguration, it is clear that federal policies will soon change. We asked a handful of technology industry executives and researchers what they would ask Obama if he were standing in front of them and how the Obama administration could help the innovation economy in New England move forward.
Jeffrey Bussgang, general partner, Flybridge Capital Partners
“There are incredible experiments going on in the 50 states in areas like education, health care and economic development, and all of those experiments are underfunded. Rather than pursue a top-down approach from Washington, I would recommend a bottom-up approach, where he would fund the local initiatives and give the authority for deploying that capital in a decentralized fashion in the hands of officials. To help the innovation economy, you’ve got to act like a VC and look at the ideas that are flowing out of local regions and fund the best ones and fund the best management teams.”
Thomas Sommer, executive director, Massachusetts Medical Device Industry Council
“I want Obama to be very careful about who heads the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and other regulatory agencies, and to make sure the people selected have sensitivity to the (local medical device) industry and its unique needs.”
Don Quenneville, director, Defense Technology Initiative
“I would ask him to remember that for all technology sectors, New England is the technology center for the Department of Defense. I would want to remind him of that when they start looking for places to invest.”
Abigail Barrow, founding director, Massachusetts Technology Transfer Center
“America needs to radically increase the numbers of domestically trained scientists and engineers. Our schools are not doing well in motivating students to take up these subjects, and our universities are not producing graduates and Ph.D.s in the numbers we need. The domestic problem is a tough one, and the president-elect is even now deciding how he wants to handle politically sensitive K-12 education reforms. But the trained personnel we do not produce domestically must be imported, and here the way forward is crystal clear: the supply of H-1B visas must be expanded soon and significantly.”
Delia Vetter, senior director of benefits and programs, EMC Corp.
“The focus on adoption of electronic medical records is absolutely critical, not just to the health of the society, but to the economy as well. One of the things I would ask — as a consumer, as a patient, as a payer — is for his continued support for health-care IT and connecting and creating a web-enabled infrastructure to benefit the consumer from a patient perspective, their quality of care, and from a cost-of-payment perspective. Aggregating that data for the patient is absolutely critical, and a perfect example is that patients typically ask their doctors a simple question — ‘How much weight have I gained or lost over the last five years?’ Doctors can’t answer that."
Robert Langer, MIT professor and serial entrepreneur
“I hope and believe he will follow up on what he and I discussed when we met in Chicago in 2006 on the importance of health-related research as reflected in his book ‘The Audacity of Hope.’ ”
Colin Angle, CEO, iRobot Corp.
“We need more support for basic research at universities. There’s really an opportunity we haven’t seen in a while to put technology into education and support science.”
“I think 11 cents of every health-care dollar is spent on inefficiencies and redundant tests (according to a Rand Corp. study). Adoption of electronic health-care records could actually save $77 billion a year through decreased duplication of tests, reduction of hospital stays and more appropriate drug utilization and other efficiencies.”
Salvatore Scuderi, president, The Scuderi Group
“There is an awful lot of bright entrepreneurs here in New England, but one of the biggest problems for them is getting the funding to get their ideas off the ground. I know they have the SBA (Small Business Administration) program, but I think if they could develop a really aggressive program to help early-stage entrepreneurs, I think it would help.”
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