Healthcare deals are going one way, tech deals another. That’s my read from the past week in the Northwest, where we’ve seen some of the biggest biotech deals around, even as a prominent Seattle tech venture firm (and software financings in general) head south.

—Bothell, WA-based Alder Biopharmaceuticals scored one of the biggest biotech partnerships of the year, as Luke reported today. The company has formed a collaboration with Bristol-Myers Squibb (NYSE: BMY) to develop Alder’s experimental rheumatoid arthritis drug, ALD518, and the deal could be worth more than $1 billion. In exchange for granting Bristol a worldwide exclusive license to develop ALD518 for all uses except cancer, Alder will get $85 million upfront, as much as $764 million in development and regulatory milestone payments, sales-related milestone payments that could exceed $200 million, and royalties on product sales.

—I took a look at the venture and debt financings for Washington companies last month (and the previous two months), and concluded that large investments in software startups aren’t coming back anytime soon. The data, courtesy of New York-based ChubbyBrain, shows most of the money is in healthcare and life sciences.

—Kirkland, WA-based Clearwire has secured an additional investment of $1.5 billion from Sprint, Comcast, Time Warner Cable, and Intel, as first reported by the Wall Street Journal. Google, a previous investor, is not participating in the round. The money will support Clearwire’s (NASDAQ: CLWR) deployment of its WiMax broadband network.

—Verathon, a Bothell, WA-based maker of ultrasound technology, has been acquired by Sarasota, FL-based Roper Industries (NYSE: ROP) as part of a pair of transactions worth a combined $356 million, as Luke reported. The price of Verathon’s sale by itself was not announced. The company develops a 3-D diagnostic imaging tool that helps doctors diagnose bladder disorders.

—One of Seattle’s most prominent tech VC firms will not be raising another fund or making new investments. Len Jordan of Frazier Technology Ventures confirmed the news as he announced he’s moving to Madrona Venture Group at the beginning of next year.

—Bellevue, WA-based Light Sciences Oncology has lined up $35 million in follow-up financing to develop its drug-device treatment for cancer, as Luke reported. The investors weren’t disclosed, but the deal gives Light Sciences the right to access a $23.3 million line of credit, and $11.8 million more if investors choose to exercise warrants. The company raised $40 million from undisclosed VCs last year.

—Seattle startup Movaya Wireless has been acquired by Digby, a mobile commerce firm based in Austin, TX, for an undisclosed price. Movaya was founded in 2006 by Phil Yerkes and Stanley Wang, and focuses on making digital goods storefront applications for the iPhone, Android, and mobile Web platforms. The company’s development team in China will serve as the basis for Digby’s operations in Asia.

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[Updated and corrected---8:30 pm ET on 11/05/09]Marlboro, MA-based Evergreen Solar (NASDAQ:ESLR) said it will move its solar panel production from Massachusetts to China—dealing a blow to the clean technology economy in the commonwealth.

Evergreen plans to begin migrating the manufacturing of solar panels out of its Devens, MA, plant to a facility under construction in Wuhan, China, in mid-2010, the company announced in an earnings statement on Wednesday. A lull in demand for solar cells globally and other factors have caused the price of solar panels like the ones that Evergreen makes to plunge by more than 30 percent since mid-2008, when its Devens production facility opened, the firm said. However, the company said it does plan to continue producing its silicon wafers and cells in Devens. It will also produce the silicon wafers in China beginning next year.

An Evergreen spokesman was not immediately available for comment this afternoon, and it was unclear how relocating panel production would impact its work force in Massachusetts.

Manufacturing in China is intended to reduce overall production costs, and Evergreen said it is receiving a $33 million loan from Chinese government to help cover the expenses of moving into a new plant that the company will lease from a contract manufacturing firm called Jiawei Solar. Evergreen’s move may sting some Massachusetts politicians and taxpayers; the state committed $23 million in grants to the firm, behind considerable support from Gov. Deval Patrick and his administration, to support its manufacturing in Devens. And Ian Bowles, the state’s secretary of Energy and Environmental Affairs, said in a statement about two years ago when construction of the Devens plant began that “we are breaking ground not only on a factory, but on the commonwealth’s clean energy future.”

Evergreen said it will manufacture its “String Ribbon” wafers at the facility it is building and will own in China, and that the wafers will then be sent to the the plant that its partner Jiawei Solar is building to convert the wafers into solar cells, which are used to make solar panels. The worldwide solar panel market has taken a beating over the past year or so due to reduced government spending or subsidies for the products in Spain and Germany, both of which are big solar panel users, as well as lower-than-projected demand in other countries such as the U.S., according to a recent report by Lux Research, which has an office in Boston. [Editor's note: the above paragraph was corrected to say that Evergreen, not its Chinese manufacturing partner, will build and own the facility where its silicon wafers will be produced in China. There are also added details from the company about the overall production process.]

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Seattle-based Movaya Wireless, a mobile software startup, has been acquired by Digby, a mobile commerce firm based in Austin, TX. Financial terms were not announced. Movaya was founded in 2006 by Phil Yerkes and Stanley Wang, and recently has been focused on making digital goods storefront applications for the iPhone, Android, and other mobile Web platforms. The company has a development team in China that will serve as the basis for Digby’s operations in Asia.

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Craig Mundie is a geek, and I mean that in the best possible way. Microsoft’s chief research and strategy officer, the 17-year veteran of Redmond, WA, still talks like an engineer, throwing out terms like “heterogeneous machine architectures,” “GUIs” (graphical user interfaces), and “clouds and clients” like there’s no tomorrow. It’s kind of refreshing, given that he is in charge of setting the long-term agenda for one of the most powerful companies on the planet.

Mundie is in the midst of a weeklong tour of some top universities around the country. He called me yesterday from Cambridge, MA, where he had just finished a presentation to Harvard University students, faculty, and guests. He visits the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (my alma mater) today, and comes to Kane Hall at the University of Washington tomorrow afternoon. It’s similar to the college tours Bill Gates used to do.

From what I can tell, the goal is to stir up interest in computer science, give audiences a glimpse of future computing systems as Microsoft sees them, and stimulate discussions about how these technologies can help solve some pressing global problems. (You can read more about Mundie’s tour and demos in this Seattle Times story.)

Besides hearing Mundie’s thoughts on computer science education and the future of computing, I wanted to drill down and ask him about the challenge of taking on Microsoft’s strategy development (after Gates stepped down last year) in the most difficult economic times in recent memory. I also wanted to ask him about the deeper culture of Microsoft, the renewed role of research in the company’s future, and the importance of nurturing relationships around the world—and his secret ally in that quest.

Here are some edited highlights from our conversation:

Xconomy: What are you trying to get across to university audiences on this tour?

Craig Mundie: In these presentations, I’m trying to get them to think not only about how computing evolves, but with that evolution, what kinds of problems will become approachable, and what are the new methods? Several things are evolving in parallel [and leading to more heterogeneous and complex machines]. That begets the requirement of how to do programming around parallel computing. With very high-scale computing facilities, the cloud and the client come together to form one system that people will program. They will use those things together with new display and sensing technologies.

Just as the GUI revolutionized computing, we could see a similar revolution with more natural interactions with machines, rather than just “type and point and click.” That will expand the number of people who can interact with computers. With the diversity, rooms can become computers [for instance]. You won’t think of them so much as a computer.

X: What are some of the global problems you think advanced computing will help solve?

CM: Beyond the computer science realm, I’ve talked about energy and the environment. I show one piece of research work we’re doing to compose computational models, a simplified climate model, at Princeton and Microsoft Research. It shows linkages between deforestation in the Amazon and atmospheric temperatures around the rest of the world. If you were a policy person, these kinds of things would give you tools to support your decision making.

In energy, we’re doing computer modeling and direct visualizations. I showed a model, loaned to us from TerraPower [the nuclear power firm spun off from Nathan Myhrvold’s Intellectual Ventures …Next Page »

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Imagine the following scenario for a minute: A middle-aged man books a round trip ticket from San Francisco to Shanghai. His reservation indicates this will be a short trip; he is going to be in China less than one full day. Upon arrival at the airport in Shanghai, the immigration control officer asks him “What has brought you to China?” The man looks sickly, is sweating profusely, and appears much older than the 54 years indicated on his passport. Knowing this question was going to be asked, he has been carefully thinking over his answer during the 14-hour flight. “I’m here to buy drugs,” he confesses.

At this point, you’re probably thinking he’ll be marched off to some dank prison cell, never to be heard from again. You would be wrong. Instead, he’s told, “Welcome to China!” and after clearing customs, he heads to a large medical institute located on the Bund by the Huangpu River. Here, he will get his first injection of the generic biologic drug that has led him to this ancient land, along with a yearlong supply to take (actually, smuggle) back home.

Why would someone travel 6,200 miles to buy drugs when they are available here in the U.S.? For the same reason people now are traveling to India, Thailand, or South Africa for heart surgery, hip replacement, or some cosmetic procedure – affordability. They have no (or limited) insurance coverage, and the costs of their treatment are significantly less in other countries. An estimated 750,000 Americans went overseas to have medical procedures done in 2007, according to Wikipedia, saving the recipients a great deal of money and costing the U.S. health industry billions in lost revenue. The cost of the surgery overseas can be one-tenth the cost of having the surgery done in the U.S., even factoring in the travel expense. Similarly, biologics can be every bit as expensive as heart surgery or hip replacement. Treatments for rheumatoid arthritis, cancer, hemophilia, or rare enzyme deficiencies can cost tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands of dollars a year.

As I’ve discussed in a previous Xconomy piece, generic versions of biologic drugs are not currently for sale in the U.S. Even worse for patients who would benefit from these, regulatory authorities are still in the process of formulating a pathway that would allow the approval of generic biologics. So what’s the likelihood of my scenario above coming to pass? Will shopping overseas for biologics come to resemble the trend of traveling for cut-priced surgery? Here are the key factors involved:

Insurance—For the sake of our discussion, this is a non-issue. If your insurance covered your biologics, then you wouldn’t be leaving the country in the first place to purchase these drugs overseas.

Availability—Just because a biologic is available in the U.S. doesn’t mean that you are going to be able to buy a version of it overseas. Foreign manufacturers, like American ones, will likely choose to make drugs based on their potential profitability as well as whether or not they have patent …Next Page »

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Seattle-based Decho, which is an EMC (NASDAQ: EMC) company, and China Telecom announced today a partnership to deliver cloud-based data services to Chinese Internet users. The companies’ first offering is called eYun, and is based on Decho’s Mozy online backup service. Financial terms of the partnership weren’t given. Decho was formed in November 2008 by Hopkinton, MA-based EMC, in a merger between Utah-based Mozy and Seattle-based Pi.

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A123Systems, the Watertown, MA-based advanced battery manufacturer that hopes to provide lithium ion batteries for the next generation of electric and hybrid vehicles, today revealed the expected stock price for its initial public offering. The company will seek to sell 25 million shares of its common stock at $8.00 to $9.50 per share, according to regulatory forms filed today. That would bring the company between $200 million and $237.5 million in new working capital.

Individual shareholders, including senior managers at A123, will sell an additional 680,500 shares, potentially netting them $5.4 million and $6.5 million. A date for the IPO has not been announced. Morgan Stanley and Goldman, Sachs are the lead underwriters, and A123 will trade on the NASDAQ exchange under the ticker symbol “AONE.”

There is likely some numerological significance to the timing of the announcement of A123’s IPO terms. As Bob reported last year, A123 deliberately chose to submit its original IPO filing at 8:08 a.m. on August 8, 2008 (8:08 on 08/08/08). A123’s co-founder, MIT material scientist Yet-Ming Chiang, was born in Taiwan, and in Chinese culture the number 8 is considered to be especially lucky, associated with sudden fortune and prosperity.

Today is 09/09/09, and in Chinese numerology, the number 9 is traditionally associated with power, since it is the highest number before 10. In Mandarin (though not Cantonese) the word for 9 is also a homonym for “long-lasting.” Traditionally, the robes of the emperor of China showed nine dragons, and in Chinese mythology, dragons have nine children.

As Chiang wrote in an e-mail after the initial IPO filing: “It was not a coincidence that the ’send’ button was pushed at 8:08am on 8/8/08, although I wasn’t the one who did it!” Today’s filing is probably no coincidence either.

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Kai-Fu Lee, the charismatic former Microsoft VP and founding director of the company’s research lab in Beijing who reported last week that he was quitting as head of Google’s China arm, has announced that he has raised $115 million to create a new incubator for high-tech startups in China.

The new organization, Innovation Works, will mentor and prepare entrepreneurs to launch new businesses, chiefly in the Internet, mobile Internet, and cloud computing spaces, according to its website. A particular area of focus inside these sectors is e-commerce targeting the financial, medical services, and educational markets.

Innovation Works will be based in Beijing, apparently near the famous Tsinghua University, China’s most prestigious science and technology university. It is funded by a high-powered group of investors and VCs that includes Steve Chen, a co-founder of YouTube, Foxconn Technology Group, the Legend Group, and the New Oriental Education & Technology Group. The lead venture investor is WI Harper Group. Lee is named as founder, chairman, and CEO.

The goal is to target “the Greater China market, and build ‘dream teams’ to collect, analyze, prioritize and execute on the most promising ideas,” according to the Innovation Works website. “Innovation Works will accelerate an entrepreneur’s ability to prove ideas, obtain additional external funding, and then spin-off into an independent company.”

“The Chinese entrepreneurial environment is still in its formative stage, with significant barriers for the early-stage entrepreneur: the lack of management experience and coaching, the reluctance of venture capitalists to invest in companies in the formation stage, and the lack of networking and …Next Page »

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As cross-pacific partnerships multiply among life science companies in California and Asia, San Diego biotech companies are increasingly interested in learning how to do business in China, India, and other countries. At least 250 representatives of the international life science community are expected to gather for CalAsia, a two-day conference that begins today at the downtown San Diego Marriott Hotel & Marina.

This is the first year the event has been hosted by Biocom, San Diego’s life sciences industry association. Those attending include established pharmaceutical companies, startups, investors, and researchers, as well as individuals and delegations from China, Singapore, Korea, Australia, India, and other countries in the Asian Pacific region. Workshops and plenary sessions include an overview of opportunities and challenges for the biopharmaceutical industry in key markets, licensing deals with Asian partners, raising money in Asia, and evolving intellectual property rights in China and India,

In a preview of the event, I asked Dr. Hui Cai to answer some questions about doing business in Asia. She is president and CEO of Inflexion BioPartners, which provides international management and consulting services in the life sciences, and she has been involved in international sourcing of drug candidates, cross-Pacific operations, strategic planning, and strategic partnerships. She also serves as chairwoman of the board at the Sino-American Biomedical and Pharmaceutical Professionals Association, although she notes these are her personal comments.

Xconomy: What does it mean that the FDA has opened an office in China?

Hui Cai: Setting offices in China reflects the shift in the FDA’s prevention-focused approach to ensure quality at the point of manufacture and that U.S.-bound goods are safe before they are exported. It also plays a positive role in facilitating better communications, and in sharing information and best practices with Chinese regulatory authorities and manufacturers. In reality, good cooperation is key to maintaining a mutually beneficial practice, and it’s important to ensure intentions remain true to sharing best practices, rather than imposing standards unilaterally.

X: What are the chief concerns today for U.S. biotechs that want to form partnerships in Asia, and especially China?

HC: Many U.S. biotechs are reaping …Next Page »

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Evergreen Solar (NASDAQ:ESLR), a manufacturer of low-cost silicon-based solar power products, will offer $60 million in common stock, the Marlboro, MA-based company announced today. Proceeds from the offering are intended for the construction of a new factory in Wuhan, China, and the expansion of a facility in Midland, Michigan. Last year Evergreen closed its Marlboro, MA, facility and opened a factory in Devens, MA. The company posted a net loss of $64.3 million for the first quarter of 2009.

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There’s a saying in sports that if you don’t notice the referees, they’re doing a great job. The same goes for offensive linemen in football, tech support in big companies…and Kent, WA-based Naverus when you’re flying in an airplane. Sure, we in the media notice companies like Naverus when they raise $4 million in venture funding in a tough climate for follow-on financing (announced last Friday). But, truth be told, we’ve had our eye on this interesting aircraft-navigation tech company for a while now.

Naverus was founded in 2003 by a pair of Alaska Airlines pilots, Steve Fulton and Hal Andersen, and former Coinstar CEO Dan Gerrity. The idea was to commercialize an emerging technique known as “required navigation performance” (RNP), which harnesses advanced avionics and GPS technology to guide airplanes’ flight paths on approaches and departures in such a precise way as to do away with ground-based navigation—and what’s more, make flight paths faster and more fuel-efficient, and reduce carbon emissions to boot. The technique was originally developed to help planes take off and land at Juneau International Airport and other remote locations where pilots have to deal with dangerous weather conditions and mountains.

It’s all part of a broader shift in aviation practices called Performance-based Navigation, which uses cutting-edge sensors, communications equipment, and sophisticated flight computers, to work out airplanes’ flight paths—an area that Naverus contributes to across the board. The company has been part of a “fundamental transformation of how air navigation takes place,” says Dottie Hall, chief marketing officer at Naverus. Hall would know; she was a founding vice president of Eclipse Aviation in Albuquerque, NM, and has owned and managed touring operations of vintage airplanes, including her own 1950s-era Lockheed Constellation. And yes, she has her pilot’s license. (Hall was also a very early employee at Microsoft in the late 1970s, but that’s another story.)

To give some idea of the benefits of Naverus’s technology, Hall points out that Southwest Airlines, a flagship customer, saves on the order of one minute per flight using RNP—and that translates into about 155,000 tons of carbon dioxide saved per year. Fuel savings are in the ballpark of …Next Page »

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SAIC Motor Corporation, a state-owned carmaker in Shanghai, China, plans to use iron-phosphate-based lithium ion batteries from Watertown, MA-based A123 Systems for a new gasoline-electric hybrid car that could be available in China by 2010, according to a report yesterday in the Wall Street Journal. The Journal said A123 executives would not confirm the report, but the company has published a headline about the agreement on its website.

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Bellevue, WA-based Blade Games World announced today it has raised $4 million in a first round of venture funding led by California Technology Ventures. Blade Games was formed last month in a merger between game-development toolmaker Digini, based in Issaquah, WA, and Shanghai, China-based Vyk Games.

Digini was known for creating Blade3D, a software tool for developing Windows and Xbox 360 video games, which it released last fall. The company had closed a financing deal with California Technology Ventures back in October, but the amount was not disclosed.

Blade Games is trying to make game development cheaper and easier for everyone from individuals to professional developer teams. Its subscription-based tools work with Microsoft’s XNA game development software, and let developers do the art, design, and programming for games through an intuitive user interface.

The new funds will presumably be used to expand the company’s product development for the global gaming market. “California Technology Ventures shares our vision to create a new breed of integrated game development solutions and market place for everyone from the hobbyist to the professional game developer,” said Tony Garcia, chief executive of Blade Games (and former CEO of Digini), in a statement. “Our teams, both here in Seattle and in China, have already begun to expand our offering.”

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Issaquah, WA-based Digini announced it has merged with Shanghai, China-based Vyk Games to form a new company called Blade Games. The new firm will provide game development software and outsourcing services to game makers. Financial terms weren’t disclosed. Blade Games will be headquartered in Bellevue, WA, and headed by Digini CEO Tony Garcia.

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If there was an “ah-ha!” moment for Huya Bioscience International, it occurred in 2004, when founder Mireille Gingras was working as a consultant for mid-size biotech companies.

“I was looking for opportunities for in-licensing compounds in China when I found a very interesting drug for Alzheimer’s,” Gingras recalls. The potential for the Chinese drug in the United States and elsewhere was big, but Gingras says she saw an even bigger business opportunity in licensing the legions of drug candidates under development in China.

She ran with her idea, and started Huya at a time when the global pharmaceutical industry faces a pressing need for new drug compounds. Gingras says Huya now has “hundreds” of in-licensed Chinese compounds in its portfolio, which includes a spectrum of pre-clinical and clinical drug candidates in such therapeutic areas as oncology, neurology, immunology, and hematology.

“It’s a whole new source for drugs, and the pharmaceutical companies are very excited about this,” says Jan Tuttleman, Huya’s vice president of marketing. “It’s like a whole new oil field that we’ve found.”

The company has a multi-faceted strategy for capitalizing on this drug-development gusher. Huya plans to in-license some prospective drugs from China and bring …Next Page »

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San Diego wireless giant Qualcomm (NASDAQ: QCOM) has reached a licensing agreement with Beijing Tianyu Communications Equipment Co., China’s biggest cell phone maker.

Under the deal, Tianyu has obtained worldwide rights to develop, manufacture and sell Qualcomm’s proprietary CDMA2000 and WCDMA subscriber units and modem cards. Qualcomm said Tianyu will pay royalties at its standard worldwide rates. Tianyu manufactured about 24 million handsets this year.

The China Daily reports today the deal represents a shot in the arm for China’s CDMA business, which has been transferred recently from China Unicom to China Telecom as part of the country’s telecom restructuring.

China Telecom launched its CDMA service yesterday and vowed to invest nearly $11.7 billion to upgrade its network and buy handsets. Qualcomm’s CDMA technology was previously used for years by China Unicom.

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A couple of news tidbits involving China in the past week have made me look more closely at what local startups and companies are doing to expand there. On Thursday, Seattle-based Airbiquity, a wireless communications firm focused on the auto industry, announced it has entered the Chinese market, branding itself locally as Ai Bi Ke Communications Technology and setting up an office in Chengdu. The move makes good sense, given China’s burgeoning car culture.

And yesterday, Seattle-based wireless startup Movaya announced its Chinese mobile-development team, also in Chengdu, is teaming up with PressOK Entertainment’s software teams in Russia and Belarus to develop mobile games. Ken Myer, the CEO of the Washington Technology Industry Association (WTIA), told me last month that he thinks the Chinese market for mobile games is pretty far behind the U.S.—but it could be a good time to get in on other mobile software applications.

Not sure what it all means yet, but it’s clear there’s a pattern. Chinese talent, companies, and market opportunities are becoming more embedded in the fabric of Seattle-area innovation. While the economic downturn could lead more U.S. companies to outsource jobs and services, they are also trying to tap a new global market. And on the flip side, Chinese universities and companies are looking to develop leadership roles and move up the value stream. It’s a compelling situation to watch.

A few other recent highlights:

—Bellevue, WA-based Formotus and Seattle-based Mobile Semiconductor talked to me about building relationships with strategic investors and partners in China. The mobile companies were part of a five-company WTIA contingent that toured China in October. One key takeaway was that building these relationships and understanding the market takes time and patience.

—Issaquah, WA-based McObject, a maker of data management software, has expanded in China this fall, adding a team in Beijing doing work on embedded databases. McObject, which was also part of the WTIA tour, already has a presence in the Chinese market, but is looking to accelerate its growth there.

—Oberon Media, a New York-based developer of games and platforms with a Seattle publishing office (I-Play), scored a $20 million strategic investment from Hong Kong-based Infinity Equity in October. The partnership represents a strong effort to establish an Oberon presence on the ground in China.

—It’s definitely not just about outsourcing anymore. Bellevue-based Intellectual Ventures, headed by Nathan Myhrvold and Edward Jung, has opened an office in Beijing. Its goal is to work with local universities and institutes to help commercialize inventions, as well as keep tabs on foreign competition for ideas and intellectual property. The company’s Asian expansion is being led by global technology head Patrick Ennis, who spoke with me recently.

—Microsoft Research Asia, based in Beijing, celebrated its 10th anniversary last month. The lab has become an epicenter for computer-science research in several areas, including graphics, user interfaces, multimedia, search and advertising, and now cloud computing and theory. Three of the lab’s managing directors have gone on to become Microsoft vice presidents in Redmond.

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Seattle-based Movaya and PressOK Entertainment announced today they are joining forces to develop mobile games. Financial terms and impact of the deal were not disclosed. PressOK was formed by the merger of mobile-gaming companies Reaxion and Mobliss in September. Reaxion’s development teams are in Russia and Belarus, while Movaya’s team is in China.

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Why can’t big companies invent? How should inventors handle their intellectual property? And what are countries around the world doing on these fronts? I recently stopped by Intellectual Ventures in Bellevue, WA, to get the scoop from Patrick Ennis, IV’s global head of technology. Ennis was a venture capitalist with Arch Venture Partners in Seattle for 10 years before taking his current post in early 2008. (Between jobs, he took some time off and, among other things, chopped wood full-time for a week.)

Back in October, Xconomy reported that Ennis is heading up Intellectual Ventures’ expansion in China, Japan, Korea, India, and Singapore. The invention company, which is led by founders Nathan Myhrvold and Edward Jung, currently has some $5 billion under management, 450-plus employees, and 160 university partnerships around the world. I wanted to get a deeper sense of Ennis’s philosophies on invention and intellectual property on a global scale.

Ennis organized his thoughts loosely around a talk he gave last month at the Ready To Commercialize 2008 conference, run by the Office of Technology Commercialization at the University of Texas (which happened to be IV’s 100th university partner). In Austin, he spoke on game-changing approaches to commercializing inventions. The conversation we had over lunch in Bellevue was free-flowing and touched on everything from anatomy and antibiotics to Sumerian culture and the Renaissance.

I was particularly intrigued by Ennis’s take on the current state of global competition and its historical context. “It’s a complicated world,” he said. “Leonardo da Vinci could do what he did because the world was not as complicated. Leonardo could not be a Renaissance person today—there’s too much to know.”

A few more highlights from Ennis, in his own words:

—On doing business at Intellectual Ventures: “We want to create a market for invention. We want to reward inventors, perfect the process of invention, and make invention respectable…We don’t ask for exclusive deal sourcing agreements, we like to earn our business a deal at a time, the old-fashioned way. All organizations, if they succeed, have to fight the hubris thing. You see that with all big companies. IBM had it, Microsoft had it, and Google, quicker than any other startup, got it. It’s amazing how the hubris seeped into Google real quick. And the backlash is coming—you see it in the EU and, to a certain extent, in the States.”

“We’re a collection of individuals, and business is always done personally, one on one, whether you work for a 10-person company, or 450, or 4,000,” Ennis says. “That’s when companies lose their way, …Next Page »

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Last month, Xconomy reported on a visit to China by five Seattle-area tech companies as part of a mobile-telecom mission organized by the Washington Technology Industry Association (WTIA). The goal of the trip was to open up business opportunities for the companies by setting up meetings with potential partners, investors, and customers. On Friday, I sat down for a one-on-one with Ken Myer, the president and CEO of the WTIA (and an Xconomist), to talk about the trip and what he learned about the Chinese mobile market.

Myer led the delegation, together with the Washington State Community, Trade and Economic Development office, and representatives from the local tech companies Formotus, McObject, Mobile Semiconductor, RealNetworks, and Zoodango. The trip included stops in Beijing, Shanghai, and Shenzhen, extensive meetings with dozens of companies and local government officials, and an excursion to the Great Wall—Myer’s first trip there, though he’s been to China several times.

Their experience struck me as useful stuff for anyone thinking globally about the impact of their company or organization, particularly in the mobile sector. So, here are Myer’s top five take-aways after observing the China mobile market up close:

1. It’s even bigger than you think. With more than 700 million handsets out there (100 million were sold in the first half of this year alone), the Chinese market size is truly impressive. “Embedded software around improving performance or cost of a device is an early adopter opportunity,” Myer says.

2. Mobile behaviors of consumers are very different compared with the U.S. Hardly anyone leaves a voice message, there’s lots of texting, and much less use of data applications—the mobile market is something like 90 percent voice and 10 percent data (versus 69 percent voice and 31 percent data in the U.S.), according to Myer.

3. Think regionally. Domestic growth is key to the Chinese mobile industry. And a lot of that growth is in rural areas, where there are cheap “mountain plans” for wireless service. “There’s no single application for all of the country,” says Myer. “Pick a province, and focus on one arm of a carrier that’s amenable to working with you.”

4. Mobile business applications are in early days. “It’s a good time to get in,” says Myer, though there are long sales cycles and adoption times at this point. And mobile gaming is even further behind.

5. As for intellectual property, go in with your eyes wide open. Keep in mind Web services are probably easier to protect than a technology that involves a disk or file that can be copied.

Myer also stressed the importance of building personal and business relationships. Each day on the trip was filled with formal business meetings, followed by a lavish banquet. (Myer cited steamed fish, seafood, and duck as his favorite dishes.) “Meals are really where the relationship is established. You talk to people one-on-one, and you cement the personal relationship…It’s important to think of these efforts as long-term,” he says. At the same time, “we want to get business and revenues flowing for our members.” To that end, Myer says he plans to return to China early next year, in part to visit more companies and formalize a trade cooperation agreement with Chinese officials.

Lastly, Myer had an unrelated (and much more Washington-centric) public service announcement: Get your applications in this week for the annual Industry Achievement Awards, which will be given out at the WTIA’s 25th anniversary bash on the evening of March 25, 2009, at the Paramount Theater in downtown Seattle. The deadline for all entries is this Friday, November 21. The award categories include technology innovator of the year, consumer product or service of the year, and a new one, breakthrough startup of the year.

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