Tech council hones its focus

The Utah Technology Industry Council is looking to chart a course to a new destination.

The council is fresh off helping Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. identify economic clusters in Utah, and members on Thursday broached several possibilities for their future focus.

Chairman Stan Lockhart said the council should not flood the Legislature with bill ideas, and members on Thursday instead suggested bringing together tech leaders to discuss ideas for boosting their industries and finding methods to better move university research-based technologies to commercialization.

Member Curtis Brunson said it would be "prudent" and "helpful" to collect a list of industries' problems and present them to Huntsman. He praised the governor's efforts to help the state economy, saying he is "absolutely stunned" at Huntsman's level of personal involvement in economic development.

"The governor's really moved out on this thing. . . . Personally, I think a lot of what he's bitten off is huge, and I don't know if he can pull it all off. But if he can pull off 50 percent, I think the state would be much better off," Brunson said.

"If you channel down into something that's an actionable set of items, I think the governor probably would welcome that, to be quite frank. Now, will the rest of the politicians? I don't know the state that well. I don't understand all the nuances."

Brunson said "a number of us would be surprised by some of the things they (industry leaders) worry about."

Member Michael Paul said the council has been lacking commitment and input from industry executives, although the group has representatives from some industry associations.

Greg Jones, the state's science adviser who is overseeing development of the clusters, said cluster directors already are in discovery mode and trying to bring industry executives together to find out what can be done to make the clusters more vibrant.

Brunson, president of Communication Systems-West for L-3 Communications, said state issues often don't affect his company's operations as much as federal ones. But the state needs to be sure it maintains a "well-trained, well-educated work force," he said.

"You've got to make sure you have a pool of talent that's well-trained and readily available. . . . Could it be better? It could always be better. Right now, I'm pretty satisfied," he said, adding that the technical talent being produced by the universities is "superb."

---

E-mail: bwallace@desnews.com