OVERLAND PARK, Kan.  

I’ve just spent the day at Invest Midwest, a venture capital forum at which 30 promising entrepreneurs made 10-minute pitches to folks with money to invest.  There’s a lot to be hopeful  about, with some very interesting companies emerging from St. Louis, Omaha and other surprising places in the middle of the U.S. But I’m going to blog back-to-front and start with keynote speaker Harold Bradley, who provided something of a counterpoint to the entrepreneurs’ unbridled optimism.

Bradley, chief investment officer for the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation in Kansas City, gives the Midwest an “A” for ideas. That reflects biotech research going on at the Stowers Institute for Medical Research in Kansas City, at Washington University, at the University of Wisconsin and at a handful of other technology hubs. But he gives the broad region a “C+” for collaboration and a “D” for commercialization. Those two elements, he emphasized, are just as important as the technology in building businesses.

“Ideas are one thing, but if you don’t collaborate, you (Midwesterners) can’t win, because the seats of power are not shifting in venture capital and finance,” Bradley said. Those seats, of course, would be in places like Boston, New York and Silicon Valley. Bradley  noted that Kansas City has no home-grown venture capital pools. And, he said, efforts to jump-start the investment climate are hampered by competing interests within the region. The Kansas Legislature, for instance, insisted that the University of Kansas retain veto power under any investments made in a joint research venture with a Missouri hospital. Midwesterners have to realize, he said, that “the enemy is not Kansas or Missouri, the real competition is in China or India.”

Without naming names, Bradley criticized universities for being slow to commercialize their research. “Idea transfer for universities, especially in the Midwest, is still largely broken,” he said.   Noting that universities get 10 times as much money from alumni entrepreneurs as they do from technology licenses, he asked, “So, why does it take so long to get the (tech-transfer) deals done?”