 This is Think Tech Hawaii, Community Matters here. Welcome and aloha everybody. My name is Mark Shklav. I am the host of Think Tech Hawaii's Law Across the Sea program. Today we welcome David I, a lawyer who has come across the sea to Hawaii to lead the state's development of commercial technology, innovation and intellectual property. David is the Chief Innovation Officer, which I really like that name, and Director of the Office of Innovation and Commercialization at the University of Hawaii. We're going to ask what his responsibilities are, what's he up to? David, welcome. It's good to see you. Thank you Mark. Thank you for coming. What is the Chief Innovation Officer? What is your office do and where are you from across the sea? How did you get here? Fill us in a little bit about your background, what you're doing, please. Sure. Star from the very beginning, I was born and raised in Taiwan and on the other side of the Pacific and came to the U.S. for grad school and ended up staying. And I stayed mostly in the Silicon Valley for more than 30 years where I studied more and worked more and studied more. And in recent years I've been helping Stanford University in their technology transfer program for six years and also being the Director of Office, very similar to what we have at University of Hawaii, but over there for City University of Hong Kong for four years, right before coming over last year to Hawaii. And of course prior to the university environment I also worked more than 20 years in Silicon Valley as engineer, engineer, manager, marketing, manager, director, VP, several startups of my own and six years of venture capital investment in mostly in Northern California. So would be accurate your background is in technology, innovation, and a lot of it in Silicon Valley? True. I professionally always trained to be a computer scientist and then also picked up a Stanford MBA in the early 90s and then eventually got attracted to a law and finished a JD degree from Santa Clara University in IP law. And you're also a patent attorney? I'm also a patent attorney registered in California. So you've got a lot of technology type backgrounds and invention type background. Yeah, I've also invented technologies and hold my own patents. So I like to tell people I've tried out all the different seats around the table when it comes to technology and innovation. Well okay, so what are you doing here? What is the Chief Innovation Officer? And again I love that title, I mean it's like something that is a Disney almost, I mean it's just a great title. What do you do? What are you doing here in Hawaii? What is your job? Yeah, it really comes with two parts. Part number one is we are supposed to grow and sustain the innovation ecosystem encouraging entrepreneurship within the UH University of Hawaii within the UH system. And the other part is to assist the technology transfer part. A lot of our faculty members, graduate students, postdocs or even undergrad students have created wonderful innovations and we try to do seek either patent protection or simply use their copyrightable materials to find industrial or technology users out there as collaborators, as sponsors or as licensees. And then we construct a relationship, we negotiate a contract and hoping to commercialize the technology. Explain what that means, commercialization of technology or technology commercialization. What does that really mean? For guys like me, explain it in simple terms. Yeah, in the simplest term. Some people say doing R&D work in the university setting is to turn money into technology and commercialization is just the opposite. You're trying to turn technology back into money. But then we also like to think of that conversion not measured purely by monetary terms because it sometimes could be a little bit dangerous. Rather we focus more on the impact. University of Hawaii, like most other leading universities, we are the product of people's expectation. Why do we exist? Because people believe that we as an entity, we can do a better job than people could do on their own otherwise. So we actually owe it to the society that whatever products that we could offer, for instance, intellectual property, innovations, inventions, we should really think about the societal impact. So in cases where it's appropriate, we also encourage inventors to simply donate the invention to the general public, open sources of possibility, and there are other forms of such impact creation process. And so especially in Hawaii where you have a native Hawaiian element, I guess, how does that play in? That's interesting. How does that play into what you're trying to do and your goals? Yeah. It's a very important part because as you can imagine, I just mentioned that the whole point is about turning the invested assets back into some kind of an impact and the impact that's supposed to reach the bottom line of the society. And therefore, it's very important to have a context of the sense of the place. And we want to make sure that we are true to that mission, that we return something of value to the state, to the state's people, to its culture, heritage, and all that. So in today's global competitive environment, it's even more important because Hawaii is perhaps physically very isolated. But in terms of global competitive scene, it's connected to anywhere else, everywhere else. You've got to explain that to me. I mean, how is that possible? How can Hawaii compete with Silicon Valley or China for that matter? How is that possible? We're out here in the middle of the Pacific. I mean, it's a nice place. We love to live here. Great environment. But it seems to me, in my mind, that we're far away from a lot of that technology. Development places where you develop technology. How do we deal with that? It's a joke about our job being helped by two global trends. And in sort of a negative tone, one is that the world is truly flat. And therefore, kids, our kids in the future will have to compete, kids from Mongolia, from Pakistan, from Belarus, from all over the world. We cannot protect our kids by building walls, well, either physical walls or mental walls and try to protect them that way. And there is also another even bigger trend that's called robots. Robots are coming. The computer programs, artificial intelligence programs are coming. And they are going to replace much of our low-end repetitive mundane jobs for the future. And therefore, we have to prepare our new generation for that kind of future, where they have to find new differentiators. So getting back to a more positive side of the same question, how can Hawaii compete? Well, you actually mentioned a very important part of it. That is, we love this place. Well, it turns out that we're not unique. We're not strange. The whole world loves Hawaii. So if you really think about the future of jobs, most of the high-end jobs will involve high level of knowledge, knowledge acquisition, knowledge manipulation, new knowledge generation. It does not depend on the physical location anymore. I lived in Silicon Valley for 30 some years. I lived in Hong Kong for four years. Let me tell you, I really, really like living here much better. Because I can be just as effective. I can drive myself working just as hard as any of my former colleagues in Silicon Valley or in Hong Kong. But at the end of the day, I get to watch the sunset dropping into the Pacific Ocean. I get a sense of the closely knit community. I have a lot of new friends here. And I make a lot of connections. And people here are friendly. And the whole atmosphere is different. This I think is the future of workplace in the most ideal state that you can truly blend your personal life fulfillment with your professional life aspiration. And that's perfectly fine. And I think that we ought to think about that as we move forward and pushing some of our programs. And I hear you saying that the future is going to be high tech around the world, that in order to be competitive, or I'm not sure if you're saying to survive, but we need, in order to develop and be on the same level on that flat world as most address the world, we have to have this technology. Maybe people that may say, I don't agree or understand, why do we have to do that? And yet I can see your point is that if we don't do it, we're left behind. And then I can also understand what you're saying about Hawaii being an attractive place. You don't have to live in China or Silicon Valley to do this high tech development or attract people. And as a matter of fact, I think we have a lot of high tech billionaires that come to Hawaii. Right? And so is that an accurate summary of what you've said? Yes, yes, but with one very important caveat, and that is I don't believe that we're advocating that everybody becomes an engineer or a nerdy person. I neglected to introduce a part of my background. My undergrad degree was in psychology. And I actually quit a PhD program in social psychology out of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. So I have a very healthy respect for humanity side of things and for social sciences. It's actually important. We're not saying that everybody becoming an engineer, but it is important to remove the phobia and to gain a sense of familiarity as well as comfort working with technology. How do we do that? I mean, how do we balance those competing feelings and they're almost feelings, aren't they? Right. They are. They are. Part of it is just having the opportunity, the access to such technologies and also some fundamental trainings. The trainings, again, should not be focused on turning everybody into an engineer, but how do you become comfortable? How do you participate? For instance, when you look at any Silicon Valley, large and very, very successful high tech companies, you're going to find at least 20%, if not more, people having training nothing to do with high tech. You know, that's very interesting. The point that you make is almost a humanistic point. And that is, if we understand not only each other all around the world, but if we understand technology and that it's not a threat, we can learn to live with it and develop appropriately and not succumb to it, if you will, and not feel it's a threat that has to be destroyed or fought against. Exactly. In fact, even in the area that we care a lot about, the legal environment, I think Hawaii, in fact, has a very unique potential, that we being somewhat away from the mainland and also our legislature is actually more integrated, if you will, it's fairly small. We can actually even lead relative to California. We can actually have some unique legislative pieces to really enhance our position. And we're going to take a break, and then I want to ask you a little bit more about that. Tell me what those are. So we're going to take a short break and be right back with David I, Chief Innovation Officer at the University of Hawaii. Thank you very much. We will return in a minute. Hey, Aloha, and welcome to the Think Tech Hawaii studios. I'm Andrew Lang, the host of Security Matters Hawaii. I'm airing here every Tuesday at 10 a.m. Hawaii time. And I'm trying to bring this community information, security information specifically that will help you live a safer life, help keep our community safer, and help keep our businesses safer. So join me because Security Matters. Aloha. Aloha. I'm Wendy Lo, and I'm coming to you every other Tuesday at 2 o'clock live from Think Tech Hawaii. And on our show, we talk about taking your health back. And what does that mean? It means mind, body, and soul. Anything you can do that makes your body healthier and happier is what we're going to be talking about. Whether it's spiritual health, mental health, fascia health, beautiful smile health, whatever it means, let's take healthy back. Aloha. Welcome back. I am Mark Shklav, the host of Law Across the Sea at Think Tech Hawaii, and I am here with David I, the chief innovation officer at the University of Hawaii. And we're talking about how technology and human beings sometimes can lose a lot of the feeling of threat if you just learn a little bit about them. And before our break, we were talking about how you felt the legislature here or the state government perhaps may have some ways to encourage that. And I'd like you to expound on that, tell me a little bit more. Sure. I think that in my previous life, I was involved in some work in Europe. And I was utterly impressed by what the Swiss government has done. And this was during the time when a lot of hardware engineers, because the hardware design tools were so advanced these days, those days, that a lot of hardware engineers were losing their jobs. So they simply teamed up with local community colleges to offer conversion training to train those hardware engineers into software programmers. And firsthand, I witnessed the transformation in some of the engineers I worked with. Within one year, they became excellent software engineers by attending classes at night. So it really, really impressed a heck out of me. And I think that over here, we have a wonderful potential as well. We have a lot of people that could be adequately trained and with just enough information, with just enough skills that could actually enter the high-tech workforce, maybe not as a core design engineer, but they could be excellent application developers. And that would make Hawaii more of an attractive place for technology development, commercialization, inventors, innovation. Yes. Yes. Another thing that I have personally witnessed and been affected as well, in both Silicon Valley and in Hong Kong, or a certain part of China, people move around a lot. So this is a frustration of all the high-tech companies. They just barely train a person to be good enough, boom. They took off and getting a salary increase of 30%, 50%. And therefore, in a place where people don't move around that much, it's actually an advantage for companies, high-tech companies, to set up shop. Well, okay. So we've got to keep them here, too. Yes. And now, what is the legislature doing anything now, or what can they do to encourage that? I mean, Ken, is there a specific program that's being thought about right now? Yes. Legislature actually has been doing a lot of things. Just over last year, we passed Act 38 and Act 39 in the previous legislature session, which will give the University of Hawaii more flexibility when it comes to commercialization part. And so it wouldn't be seen and held to the same state entity status when it comes to procurement and things like that, because we mostly deal with very small entities and also privately held companies, a lot of trade secret issues. And so it was a major breakthrough. And in addition, legislature actually has released quite a bit of appropriate funds to encourage the establishment of local venture capital industry, so in the form of Hawaii Strategic Development Corporation and Hawaii Technology Development Corporation, both were created by legislative acts. And so we are already doing a lot. But let me give you a couple of other examples where I think we might be able to do more. One thing is that, again, we're talking about access, being able to access the next generation infrastructure. So if we could actually do more in terms of Wi-Fi coverage, it not only would make Waikiki a very enjoyable place for our visitors. Because everybody is on Wi-Fi. Everybody will be on Wi-Fi. Now, we don't criticize our visitors in terms of not being able to let go of their workaholic habits, but it clearly is very beneficial. It would also help visitors. It would encourage tourism then. Right, exactly. So it's not a competing with tourism? No, not at all, not at all. And also, if you think about it, in other parts of Hawaii, not just while we could expand beyond Honolulu on Oahu and also on other islands, if we could also set up Wi-Fi access to be more widely available, low cost or even completely free, you can imagine the kind of creativity it can unleash. Of course, because everybody who's traveling, that's the reality of today's world. Maybe things will change, but right now, everybody looks when they travel Wi-Fi accessibility. And if they know they're coming to a place that has that available for a tourist, then I hear what you're saying, that's going to work with tourism. Absolutely. Wow. And another area I think we could do a lot of is that, as you know, Hawaii has a really great history in agriculture. And University of Hawaii, when it was first founded, it was founded on the basis of agriculture college. So we still have a lot of innovations and a lot of assets kept in our agriculture college called the CETAR, College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources. And we are working together trying to unleash those assets. High-tech was that? Yeah, it is high-tech. Actually, you will be amazed, a lot of our labs in our College of Agriculture, if you visit them, you will say, am I in medical school? Because it's wet lab, it's all the benches set up, the hoods and everything. We are now going deep into the same issue. It's just life science research, but in plants, in the microbes, in the soil conditions, and the pests and pest control mechanisms, and all of those areas. We have lots of those. So if in the near future we could actually envision an area where we could actually collaborate with the government and also with the private sector to move some of the innovation systematically out of the lab into products, for instance, we will just call them natural products. Because we have lots of natural things, all the flowers that we build and that we plant, all the oils, essential oils we can extract out of them. They have certain beneficial functions, and all the food items that we actually innovate, we have quite a few different species of food items. And also we could encourage the development of food production, not in terms of raw food production, like wheat and basic crops, but in high value added food items. We really have a lot of those, for instance, we have rum production, and we have some wonderful chocolate production. Of course, coffee is a great success story. We'll have those items that could be exported, you know, widely throughout the world. And technology can encourage it. And so we're not to be afraid of technology to understand how it can work with agriculture and tourism, which I never thought about actually. But now that you, especially, you know, the tourism, I see bingo, that makes a lot of sense for technology to intertwine with tourism. The agriculture, I'm just, now that you mention it, starting to learn about it. Yeah, in terms of agriculture and tourism, actually, our thinking is more than just that. Our thinking is how to connect our tourists to our land, to the state of Hawaii, in a deeper, broader, and more meaningful manner. For example, we have actually a lot of very unique assets. For all the tourists, we probably cannot afford to invite all of them to visit our telescope. But for very few of them, those that could actually make a contribution to our economy or to our technology development, we actually could open a small fraction, a small fraction of them, to allow a deeper kind of behind-the-scene view of our telescopes, of our research in marine biology. We have Coconut Island that is virtually controlled by the University of Hawaii. It's wonderful research, world-class research facilities. And if we could actually open up those possibilities to engage certain well-qualified pre-screened tourists to actually try to build meaningful connections. And another example is that if we could actually work with our College of Hawaiian Culture. Right. You've got to pay attention to that. You understand that. Absolutely. As a tourist, when I used to come to Hawaii as a tourist, I always try to look for opportunities where I could actually observe true native Hawaiian culture, language, value, and practices. You know what? They're really hard to find. How are we going to do that? Give me a thought, please. Think about this. If Tibet, which is our major department of economic and business development and tourism, along with the tourism authority, could work with the University of Hawaii to actually craft some respectable program that would not exploit our Hawaiian way of living or their current lifestyle, we're not going to bring tour bus after bus of tourists that come down here and then ask, where's my McDonald's? So hopefully we can actually bring a different kind, different flavor of tourism that is deep and meaningful and allow outsiders to actually participate and feel the emotional connection to this land so that they actually, even when they go home, they will continue to have affinity to Hawaii, such that they will not only come back, but in the future hopefully they will come back and retire or they will come back and invest in the state of Hawaii. Yeah, and actually, if they learn a little bit about King Kalakaua, they will know that he was into innovation and inventions and, I mean, way ahead of a lot of places. He had Eolani Palace with electricity before the White House. And so, I mean, he was really into those things, but most people have no idea about that at all. Another part of innovation and creativity is the ability to tell a story. If you really think about it, that is so intertwined with Hawaiian culture. Without a very effective writing capability, they have learned how to tell a story in dances, in storytelling, from generation to generation. It's a wonderful, wonderful talent. And maybe, David, maybe the technology can help to preserve and pass it along. And David, thank you so much for sharing your time with us today and your ideas, and hopefully we can talk some more. And we are at the end of our program right now. And I thank you so much for the opportunity to have you here. Thank you. Aloha. Thank you very much, everybody. We'll be back in two weeks with another Law Across the Sea program. Today, with David, I was very interesting and opened my eyes up a lot. Thank you, David. Thank you, Mark.