Op-Ed: Kelly King Explains NCInnovation’s Mission and Benefits
“Better to finish the R&D sequence at the point a product can turn into a private business, and that’s what NCInnovation will do”
Durham, NC – Kelly King, Chair of the NCInnovation Board of Directors and retired CEO of Truist Financial Corp., authored an op-ed published yesterday in Business NC.
Read the full piece here. Excerpts are below:
I chair the board of directors of NCInnovation, a not-for-profit corporation more than seven years in the making to help commercialize the research outputs of North Carolina universities, particularly those outside the Triangle.
Doing so will help create more companies and jobs in rural areas. It’s a rural economic development initiative centered on our world-class university system.
First: How will we do it? NCInnovation has two primary legs. The first is to provide grant funding, administered by the NC Collaboratory, to university researchers in the final stage of the R&D sequence — when the “R” for research starts turning into the “D” for development.
We will offer grant funding, delivered through universities in stages and subject to binding legal agreements, to get researchers to the point their product becomes commercially investible.
In doing so, more companies will form out of university research, creating jobs with a higher probability of staying in the community that birthed them. It’s rural economic development via homegrown innovation.
I haven’t met anybody who believes public dollars should not be used for university R&D. So, to the extent one has a philosophical objection to our model, it’s a question of when public funding should stop. In my opinion, it’s a waste of money to advance a research product to the 10-yard line and see it die there or move to another state.
Better to finish the R&D sequence at the point a product can turn into a private business, and that’s what NCInnovation will do.
NCInnovation is a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit corporation focused intensely on support for North Carolina public university research that has commercial promise. NCInnovation deploys funding, mentors, and support services so that North Carolina university proofs-of-concept can turn into companies and create jobs that remain in North Carolina. Learn more at NCInnovation.org.