Matching Research to Companies

Clifford M. Gross, Ph.D., understands the importance of research. As a former professor at the University of South Florida, he has a working knowledge of that world. As CEO of Plant City-based UTEK Corp., he matches emerging technology from the nation’s university and federal research labs with companies that need these technologies.

“Normally we start with a company and find technology they’re looking for,” says Gross. UTEK (www.utekcorp.com) also helps with the acquisition and financing of technology. Recent technology transfer alliances include the University of Western Ontario in Canada and Shriners Hospital for Children in Tampa.

“It’s a thrilling business,” he says. UTEK has expanded with the acquisition of Pax Tech Transfer in the United Kingdom in October 2001 and, more recently, TechEx (www.techex.com), a technology transfer portal developed at Yale University for commercializing biomedical research. “This is an intellectual capital exchange where universities report medical research available for license,” Gross says. “Companies pay a fee for access to that information. It’s one of the first in the world.”

DocuLex Scans for Opportunity
Winter Haven-based DocuLex develops products that allow customers to scan paper documents and index archival information. The firm has been a boon to law firms and is now extending to other business categories. “With our paper capture and search and retrieval, any category is fair game,” says Tim Nissen, the firm’s marketing director. “The category we’ve had the most success with is legal. One of our partners is an attorney, so he knew that game.” Potential markets, he says, are those with “an obscene amount of paper,” such as mortgage banking.

Incidentally, Winter Haven is the home of DocuLex (www.doculex.com) because its major financial partner, Carl Strang III, has a family business there. Begun in 1996 as Florida Data Bank, a document service bureau for legal firms, Strang sold the original company and focused on software development when he realized its potential margins.

Web Sites for Dummies
Web sites can be a wonderful business tool. They can also be the most confounding, aggravating, pain-in-the-e-butt imaginable. The old saw about “garbage in, garbage out” couldn’t be truer about Web sites. Every business has one these days, but many don’t understand what makes one good. For example, why do smart companies go to great lengths to hide their telephone number and contact information?

Bill Stover’s St. Petersburg company, DataGlyphics (www.datag.com), oversees the development of sites for many local companies. We asked him to tell us the dumbest things he’s seen on Web sites:

• There’s no clear statement of business function. We find this in our own industry a lot: ‘We’re integrators of e-business and turnkey solutions.’ Even I don’t know what that means!

• Organizations that don’t use common terms. There is a standard! Instead of a ‘Products & Services’ button, they say, ‘Look Inside’ … and we’re supposed to know what that means?

• Web sites that are nothing more than marketing brochures. There is so much more you can do … if you don’t have to worry about the cost of printing, I expect to see all of your product and service details.

• Interactive forms that don’t interact. I hate it when you order a product and the site doesn’t reply with e-mail confirmation.

• Sites that let time get away. The last press release they posted is a year old. Is this company still viable?

• Surprise navigation, such as pop-up windows that exist for no reason.

Tech FYI
NanoSpective Inc., a company that specializes in evaluating the atomic structure and composition of materials for potential use in the semiconductor, aerospace and other fields has joined the University of Central Florida Technology Incubator (www.incubator.ucf.edu) … The Florida State Board of Education plans to spend $10 million on the study of photonics and related technology at the University of Central Florida’s Center for Research & Education in Optics and Lasers (www.creol.ucf.edu) … Melbourne-based AuthenTec Inc. (www.authentec.com), a producer of microchip fingerprint sensors, has received $12.1 million in equity funding from Sierra Ventures of Menlo Park, CA, and Advantage Capital Partners and Stonehenge Capital Corp. in Tampa.

Send tips, information and news releases related to technology to Melissa Wells at Maddux Report, P.O. Box 202, St. Petersburg, FL 33731. Or by email: mwells@maddux.com