UMass Magazine Online

Spring 2005

Departments

Prerequisite

Features

There Goes the Neighborhood

Fab Four

The Gravest Danger

The Wonderful World of Disney

Cooking Lessons

Prerequisite

Mothering Invention

—Charlies Creekmore




	Dr. Kenan Sahin.

THE TRICKY ISSUE TACKLED AT the latest College of Engineering (COE) Tang Endowment Lecture is one that bedevils researchers everywhere: brilliant innovations rotting away in market purgatory until they go the way of the gramophone.

As guest speaker Dr. Kenan Sahin noted, university researchers have blazed trails to countless scientific breakthroughs, from computers to synthetic penicillin. “But the mechanisms for commercially delivering these innovations have eroded. Instead of being brought to market, they are being warehoused and shelved.”

Dr. Sahin has spent his career straddling academia and industry, the strange bedfellows that often team up to mother invention. He was a faculty member at MIT, Harvard, and UMass Amherst before founding TIAX LLC, a firm that commercializes innovations. Now he serves as the company’s president.

According to Sahin, one problem is that when risk-averse companies look at the long-term research and development it takes to advance new inventions and ideas, they suffer from a corporate brand of Attention Deficit Disorder. “If it doesn’t hit my bottom line by next year,” Dr. Sahin quoted one CEO, “I’m not interested.”

Among other solutions, Dr. Sahin urged the COE to equip its students with the business savvy to nurture innovation as entrepreneurs. In that context, he’s preaching to the choir. The COE and the Isenberg School of Management already offer a 15-credit minor in engineering management, one of the few such minors in the country. It melds the sweet science of engineering with the subtle art of entrepreneurship. “While innovation is important,” said Sahin, “it’s only 5 to 10 percent of success. The rest is implementation.”

[top of page]

What Lies Beneath

What Lies Beneath: more images

The Ties That Bind

The Ties That Bind: more images

Mister Un-Hollywood

Mister Un-Hollywood: larger image

Hoop Dreams

Hoop Dreams: larger image

A Hockey Player with Heart

A Hockey Player with Heart: more images

Naming Rites