OK, you entrepreneurs and tech transfer execs, better hone those marketing skills: There’s money to be had. Intel and 24 VC firms say they plan to invest $3.5 billion (no, that’s not a typo) in American start-ups over the next two years. In addition, Intel, Google, Cisco Systems, Microsoft, and 13 other employers pledged to add jobs in 2010, specifically by hiring 10,500 graduates of American colleges, largely those with computer science and engineering degrees.

The initiative, called the Invest in America Alliance, was unveiled by Intel’s chief executive, Paul S. Otellini, in a speech at the Brookings Institution. “Unfortunately, long-term investments in education, research, digital technology. and human capital have been steadily declining in the U.S.,” Otellini said, according to a transcript of the speech. “So, too, has the commitment to policies that made us such an entrepreneurial powerhouse for more than a century.” Other countries, including China, India, Taiwan, Finland, Korea, and the Netherlands, have become “far more potent competitors in the next phase of the global economy,” he noted. As part of the alliance, the VC’s — including Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Venrock, and DCM — have committed to investing portions of their funds in start-ups founded in the United States. Intel Capital, the company’s venture capital arm, will invest $200 million.

The United States is quickly losing ground to China and India, says Robert Compton, a venture capitalist and entrepreneur who produced a documentary on education in the three countries.

Fewer than 10% of U.S. college graduates have engineering degrees, compared with more than one-third in India and China, and more foreign-born graduates of U.S. universities are returning to their home countries, he notes. “Early indicators are that we are not the center of innovation anymore,” Mr. Compton says. “It is shifting to the East.” Another indicator of the shift is patent filings, which increased 30% in China last year while declining 11% in the United States, according to the World Intellectual Property Organization.

The announcement from Otellini comes as both Intel and its VC arm could use a public relations boost themselves. The Federal Trade Commission has filed an antitrust complaint against Intel. Rajiv Goel, a former Managing Director at Intel who worked closely with Intel Capital, has admitted to leaking confidential corporate information in the Galleon insider-trading case.

Source: The New York Times

Posted March 2nd, 2010 under Intellectual Property Marketing

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