Phase Forward (NASDAQ: PFWD), the Waltham, MA-based maker of software used by pharmaceutical companies to manage data collection and analysis during clinical trials, said today that it has acquired Indianapolis, IN-based Maaguzi for $11 million in cash. Maaguzi operates a Web-based service used to collect data reported directly by patients. Phase Forward also reported today that its second-quarter revenues of $52.5 million were up 29 percent over Q208 levels.

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What if a company called a special shareholder meeting and nobody voted? Executives at San Diego’s TorreyPines Therapeutics pondered the question today after failing to muster enough votes for a proposal to liquidate and dissolve the company. In a statement, TorreyPines said 62 percent of the biotech’s stockholders failed to vote on the issue, which the board unanimously approved in May. The measure to dissolve the company requires a majority of outstanding voting shares for approval. In a bid to collect enough votes, TorreyPines adjourned its meeting until July 16th at the company’s corporate offices.

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[Corrected 4:40pm ET, June 22; see first item] Deals last week involved everything from cancer screening to trash compacting, but the analysts were kept on their toes by the dramatic events unfolding between EMC and Data Domain.

—Reuters reported that data storage giant EMC (NYSE EMC), of Hopkinton, MA, was prepared to raise its bid—from $30 to $35 dollars a share—to acquire Data Domain (NASDAQ: DDUP), a data deduplication software company based in Santa Clara, CA. The increase, if it occurred, would be made to outbid EMC rival NetApp’s (NASDAQ: NTAP) bid of $30 per share. [An earlier version of this item implied that EMC had made the increase, which EMC informed us was erroneous---Eds.] The Data Domain board recommended that shareholders reject EMC’s $30 offer, but two law firms filed class action suits on behalf of company shareholders against the board for refusing to negotiate with the Hopkinton firm.

—Exact Sciences (NASDAQ:EXAS), the Marlborough, MA-based developer of a DNA-based colorectal cancer screening test raised $8.2 million in private placement of stock. The company also announced that it had licensed technology related to DNA testing for the disease from the Mayo Clinic.

—BigBelly Solar, a Needham, MA, startup, inked a deal to distribute its solar-powered trash-compacting bin technology through Waste Management (NYSE: WMI), a Houston, TX-based waste removal company with over 20 million customers. Waste Management operates in dozens of places across North America, many of which may soon sport BigBelly technology, with the aim of lowering municipal waste expenses.

—Novartis (NYSE: NVS), the Swiss pharmaceutical giant, joined five other major drug makers in backing Boston-based startup Enlight Biosciences. Enlight is developing technologies to … Next Page »

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Living Proof, a Cambridge, MA-based startup that applies advanced material science to the beauty industry, has adopted interactive online shopping software developed by fellow venture-backed Cambridge firm Allurent, according to a press release. Living Proof, which has been well chronicled for its products that combat frizzy hair, will use Allurent’s software and widgets to provide interactive experiences to shoppers on its e-commerce website. Joe Chung, the co-founder and CEO of Allurent, is also a co-founder and former chief technology officer of e-commerce software firm Art Technology Group (NASDAQ:ARTG), based in Cambridge.

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San Diego has retained its status among the country’s top regions for innovation, but the hometown venture community is contracting to the point where venture funding is back where it was in the 1990s.

—Qualcomm is getting ready to deliver its latest innovation, a display screen for mobile devices that provides great visibility outdoors. The San Diego chip giant’s Qualcomm MEMS Technologies subsidiary has commenced operations in its display fabrication facility in Taiwan. Qualcomm’s mirasol display mimicks the shimmering color of butterfly wings, which also serve as the mirasol logo.

—Mission Ventures’ Robert Kibble says the venture capital community is undergoing a reset of the business, “and the basic reason is that the returns have not been good.” San Diego business leaders recruited Kibble to relocate here in 1996, after Netscape Communications’ breathtaking IPO in 1995. But now Mission Ventures, the firm he founded in 1997, is among a dwindling number of San Diego-based VCs that are still actively investing.

—In the countdown among high tech cities, San Diego remained at No. 7, according to a North American ranking released last week by The Milken Institute. Silicon Valley is No. 1, Seattle rose to a surprising No. 2, and Boston fell to No. 3. Metropolitan areas were ranked by “their ability to grow and sustain thriving high-tech industries.”

—Ernst & Young has crowned Quake Global’s CEO Polina Braunstein as San Diego’s High Tech Entrepreneur of the Year. Quake Global makes satellite transponders for tracking purposes for companies in trucking, heavy equipment, aviation, and maritime industries. Braunstein turned Quake Global’s business around after she was named CEO in 2003.

—The UC San Diego Entrepreneur Challenge named its award-winners in a university-wide business plan competition that had its finals Monday night. Biological Dynamics, a medical diagnostics startup led by Raj Krishnan, won the first prize of $40,000. Best high-tech/IT start-up was Radiofast, which creates better X-ray technologies.

—San Diego’s Synthetic Genomics and its renowned scientist J. Craig Venter may soon create headlines with their algae fuel initiative. Two of Venter’s major research & development lines are coal and algae, and he has suggested Synthetic Genomics is preparing an announcement for a scaled-up operation in the near future. One plan could lead to the creation of “home breweries” that use genetically engineered algae to produce backyard fuel that would be almost ready to use.

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The second annual Washington State Biomedical Device Summit will bring together leading executives, entrepreneurs, and scientists in the local medical device community on June 23 at the University of Washington Bothell. The summit is expected to include presenters from Cardiac Science, Pathway Medical Technologies, SonoSite, Philips Healthcare and other leading companies in the region. To register, click here.

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Needham, MA-based Scenic Technology has raised $1.4 million in new funding out of a planned $2.1 equity round, according to documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The company makes Microsoft .NET-based software for tracking barcodes and RFID tags on items moving through warehouses.

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A battle for control of Amylin Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: AMLN)  that began last year will come to a final showdown tomorrow at the company’s annual shareholder meeting. Challenging Amylin’s leadership in the proxy fight is Carl Icahn, the billionaire New York investor, who owns approximately 10.5 percent of Amylin’s stock, and Eastbourne Capital Management, a hedge fund based in San Rafael, CA, that owns a 12.5 percent stake in Amylin.

Carl Icahn has called for Amylin’s chairman Joseph Cook’s resignation, and in recent days the two dissident shareholder groups have gained notable support. The most significant endorsement came from Howard “Ted” Greene, an Amylin co-founder and the company’s first CEO, who urged shareholders to vote for the board candidates proposed by Icahn and Eastbourne. Icahn and Eastbourne also gained the backing of three proxy advisory firms—RiskMetrics, Proxy Governance, and Glass Lewis & Co. On Friday, P. Schoenfeld and Associates, which owns approximately 1.5% of Amylin stocks, added their support to the rebel cause.

In the weeks leading up to the annual meeting, Amylin and the dissident groups have been sending almost daily pleas for support and memos to shareholders in a “slideshow war.”
Amylin has been urging them to vote for its slate of candidates, who are listed on a blue proxy card. Icahn’s nominees are on a gold proxy card and Eastbourne’s proxy card is white.
Here are five points of disagreement as the sides see them.
Amylin’s arguments are:

—Amylin is poised to revolutionize the treatment of diabetes. The company is successfully executing its business strategy and achieving key milestones.
—Amylin says half of its board already has changed since 2005, with six new directors joining.
—Current board members have the necessary diabetes knowledge to enhance stockholder value. Icahn and Eastbourne “suffer from a fundamental misunderstanding of Amylin’s business” and would replace existing directors with individuals with no relevant diabetes experience.
—The board has repeatedly tried to avoid a proxy contest. Icahn and Eastbourne want to sell the company at a time when it is seriously undervalued.
—Of the nine companies in which Icahn has gained board representation since 2000, ImClone is the only one that showed positive price performance.

Carl Icahn’s arguments are:
—Amylin’s board has diminished the company’s value and directors have put their interests before shareholder interests.
—The Current board can not be trusted to achieve full potential of the new diabetes drug Byetta LAR.
—Amylin’s partnership with Eli Lilly was destructive to the value of the company. A faulty partnership and launch strategy led to a bloated cost structure at Amylin.
—Of the 43 pharmaceutical companies selling the top 150 products in 2007, Amylin is the only company without operating profits in 2007 and 2008.
—Amylin’s CEO has been paid well despite poor performance.

Eastbourne Capital Management’s arguments are:
—”We have been patient investors in Amylin, but Amylin’s shares have fallen more than 75 percent from 2007, a loss of approximately $5 billion of shareholder value.”
—”We are also struck by the timing of the apparent realization by Amylin’s management… that the company’s cost structure needs to be addressed, coming as it does less than a year after moving to increase the company’s sales force by 15 percent.”
—”We have lost confidence in Amylin’s leadership to take this rich product portfolio… Byetta was a break-through therapy and the company failed to capitalize on it!”
–Shareholders should judge the incumbent board by the results it has produced. The incumbent board should be held accountable for management’s lack of success.
—Eastbourne’s nominees are committed to maximizing the commercial potential of Amylin’s products.

Xconomy plans to follow Amylin annual shareholders meeting. We’ll keep you updated.

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In the race to develop a fully dissolvable cardiac stent, San Diego’s Reva Medical is clearly second. And to CEO Robert Shultz, that’s a good place to be, especially for a startup that had to restart development of its stent technology.

The cost of establishing a big new market, Shultz says, is better left to the drug and medical device giant Abbott Laboratories, which is on pace to launch its dissolvable stent nine months to a year ahead of Reva. “The important thing is to be in the race, not who is one or two,” Shultz told me when I caught up with him by phone to discuss the company’s plans.

Dissolvable, or bioabsorbale, stents are seen as the next big thing in cardiac care. They represent an advance over metal stents — tiny mesh tubes that are used to prop open previously clogged arteries. Some existing stents are coated with drugs to prevent a build up of scar tissue, a complication that can cause the blood vessel to become re-blocked. But drug-coated stents slow the healing process and carry a higher risk of blood clots that also can block the vessel.

Reva and others are betting that dissolvable stents can avoid these complications, and research in the Lancet in March suggests they may be right. As Abbott reported, the 30-patient study found that Abbott’s corn-derived stent was safe after two years. There were no cases of blood clots forming inside the stents and the stents were fully absorbed. “Abbott made a lot of progress and we want that to occur,” Shultz said. “They helped everybody by demonstrating the stents are safe.”

Shultz believes Reva’s stent has several advantages. When the stent is implanted, a series of stent elements slide open and lock into place, a unique design that helps the stent retain its shape inside the vessel. And because the stent contains iodine — unlike the Abbott stent — it is completely visible using X-ray fluoroscopy, a common form of clinical … Next Page »

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San Diego medical device company NuVasive (NASDAQ: NUVA) said today it has purchased Rockaway, NJ-based Cervitech in a in cash and stock deal that could be worth as much as $80 million, if the FDA approves Cervitech’s cervical disc replacement device. NuVasive agreed to pay $47 million upfront and another $33 million depending on FDA approval following clinical trials scheduled to be completed by the end of this year.

NuVasive is becoming acquisitive. In January, NuVasive made an initial equity investment in Progentix Orthobiology BV, a Dutch company developing calcium phosphate putty for use as a synthetic bone substitute.

NuVasive specializes in products for minimally disruptive spinal surgery. “The cervical disc replacement market will become one of the fastest growing segments in spine over the next several years as surgeons and patients choose motion preservation over traditional fusion,” NuVasive CEO Alex Lukianov said in a statement.

The market for spine implants in the United States has been estimated at $4.6 billion, according to NuVasive’s press release. NuVasive’s chief product is a biomedical system the company calls its maximum accesss surgery platform, which is used to minimize soft tissue disruption during spine surgery.

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San Diego-based Traversa Therapeutics today announced it has raised $5 million in a Series B financing round; Morningside Venture Investments led the deal, which was joined by Mesa Verde Venture Partners and existing investors. The company says the money will help it move its RNAi-based treatments for cancer into clinical trials. Founded in mid-2006, Traversa previously raised $2 million in a round led by San Diego Tech Coast Angels.

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San Diego-based Ambrx Inc. just raised another $10 Million in new equity funding, according to documents that Ambrx filed with the SEC today. The privately held biotech’s mission is to develop breakthrough therapeutics with genetically-engineered drugs. The company was founded 2003, and as Luke reported last month, previously raised $96 million in venture capital.

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Saturday’s Boston Globe contained news of a lawsuit filed by Boston-based online backup company Carbonite against two companies that supplied allegedly defective disk drive arrays. Carbonite CEO David Friend confirmed today that that a suit has been filed, but he says he’s concerned that the Globe story—which has been widely re-reported in outlets such as TechCrunch—created the incorrect impression that thousands of Carbonite customers lost their data in the incident.

“It would be easy to come away from the Globe coverage with the impression that 7,500 users lost their data, which is not at all the case,” Friend says. “Nearly all of the affected 7,500 customers were immediately and successfully backed up again and did not lose any data.”

The lead paragraph of the Globe story stated that Carbonite “is alleging that two other companies sold it more than $3 million worth of defective hardware, resulting in thousands of customers losing data.” The article included the following direct quotation from the complaint, which was filed last week in Suffolk Superior Court: “Carbonite lost the backups of over 7,500 customers in a number of separate incidents, causing serious damage to Carbonite’s business and to its reputation as a reliable source for backup data service.”

The Globe article’s lead would appear to be borne out by the quotation. But Friend says little data was actually lost in the episodes, which took place in 2007, because the company immediately grabbed new copies of the lost data from most of the affected users’ PCs. The equipment that allegedly proved unreliable had been supplied to Carbonite by Milpitas, CA-based Promise Technology via Norwell, MA-based system integrator Interactive Digital Systems. It was later replaced with hardware from a different vendor. “Since switching to Dell RAID servers a couple of years ago, there have been no further problems,” Friend says.

Carbonite’s complaint, according to the Globe, seeks unspecified damages from both Promise and Interactive Digital Systems. It charges Promise Technology with breach of contract, fraud, and unfair and deceptive acts and practices, and charges Interactive Digital Systems with breach of warranty. “All we are seeking in the lawsuit is for Promise to refund our money,” says Friend.

Update: TechCrunch has updated its story with a response from Friend and from a Carbonite customer who claims some data was lost.

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A growing number of online media companies offer mobile-friendly versions of their articles or videos, often resizing or stripping down the material to make it more easily accessible on smaller screens, and at lower bandwidth. But if you’re a cell phone owner who wants to spend a few minutes scanning mobile sites, there’s a problem. While there are services that aggregate specific types of mobile media, such as Veveo’s vtap for videos, there’s no central place to scan all of the most popular mobile content.

Today, however, Denver, CO-based Buzzwire is launching just such a service. The 20-employee startup, which obtained $4 million in venture funding from Boston’s Spark Capital and Matrix Partners in 2007, is rolling out a new community-driven website at m.buzzwire.com that collects mobile-friendly content from around the Internet, including sources like CNN, The Boston Globe, ABC.com, Slashdot, The New York Times, and People. It’s “something that hasn’t been done in mobile—a kind of mashup of Digg and Yahoo Buzz,” says founder, chairman, and chief product officer Andrew MacFarlane.

Some of the stories and videos listed on the site are selected by Buzzwire’s editors, and others are sent in by users—but all of it’s been vetted to make sure that it’s easily accessible from the user’s mobile device. The service is similar to Digg in that many of the stories are contributed by readers, and it’s similar to Yahoo Buzz in that stories are ranked according to how many people are clicking on them and sharing them. It differs from both Digg and Yahoo Buzz, however, in that users can’t actually vote stories up or down—the rankings are calculated by Buzzwire’s own algorithms.

When Buzzwire launched in 2007, it was tackling a very different problem: delivering actual streaming audio and video to cellular subscribers’ phones. And that’s still part of the company’s business—AT&T, Verizon, and Alltel use its platform, among others. But the new mobile content aggregation site “is what we meant to do from the beginning,” says MacFarlane. “We are big believers in the mobile Web. Ultimately, mobile devices are going to vastly outnumber PCs in terms of how content is addressed on the Internet, and we’re just trying to design a service that makes finding good content as easy as possible.”

Readers will like the service because the ranking algorithms will generally favor the highest-quality content, and publishers will like it because it will drive more traffic to their mobile sites, MacFarlane says. “This year 60 to 70 percent of publishers say they’re trying to figure out how to adapt content for and attract traffic to their mobile websites,” he says. “This is a place where users can go to find what’s interesting, we’ll send the traffic off to the original sources.”

Publishers can keep the cycle going by including buttons on their mobile websites that allow users to automatically share their favorite content at Buzzwire. MacFarlane says these so-called “Buzzie” buttons are “the first sharing buttons in the mobile world”—TV Guide Online is one of the first publishers to adopt them. But even if a story doesn’t have a Buzzie button, readers can send a link to Buzzwire via e-mail (to post@buzzwire.com) or text message (to the short code BUZZ9 or 28999).

Buzzwire earns money on the new portal through the advertisements interspersed with the story listings. The mobile advertising business is in turmoil, with many companies in the space hard-pressed to recruit as many advertisers as they or their publishing partners would like. But for the service’s introductory “beta” period, Buzzwire has struck a deal with a single advertising agency, New York-based Deutsch, to fill up all of the available ad inventory on its mobile directory. So for now, Deutsch clients such as DirecTV, Kodak, and the Michael J. Fox Foundation have exclusive advertising rights at m.buzzwire.com. And after the beta period, according to MacFarlane, the company expects to work with other agencies and advertising networks to create “rich video advertising” tailored for specific types of mobile handsets. (Publishers can usually charge advertisers a higher rate for video ads than for typical text or display ads.)

Buzzwire gained a high-profile leader in December in the shape of CEO Greg Osberg, the former president and worldwide publisher of Newsweek and Newsweek.com and the former president of sales and marketing for CNET. MacFarlane, who had been CEO prior to Osberg’s arrival, continues to direct the company’s product strategy. He says the company has between 20 and 30 employees, all based in Denver. (Buzzwire had a Boston office until summer 2008, but closed it to cut costs, MacFarlane says.)

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“You should visit us more often!” said one of our hosts during the MIT Sloan School of Management’s Massachusetts Tech Trek two weeks ago. The host’s enthusiasm was understandable—the company had just received news of a fresh round of funding in the midst of our visit. But such enthusiasm and energy (pun intended) was clearly evident at all of the firms that we visited as part of the Trek’s energy track on January 12-14, and was a welcome distraction from the economic malaise we keep reading about.

Co-sponsored by the Sloan Energy and Environment Club, the Energy track allowed our group to visit energy-related businesses in the Boston area to learn about firms in different stages and sub-sectors of the energy space. With the economic crisis in play and Barack Obama’s administration taking control, it was definitely an interesting and opportune time to be visiting these companies.

The energy firms we visited covered energy generation and transformation, efficiency and conservation, and consulting and research. In the generation space, we met with firms working on fossil-to-energy, storage, waste-to-energy and solar power. Interestingly, each is currently in different stages of development as a business entity.

Ze-gen, which started with SEED funding in 2005, utilizes a molten metal bath to vaporize construction and demolition and municipal waste to synthesis gas and electricity. Chief operating officer George McMillan said the company’s business model is based on the premise that they can produce energy cheaply even without taking into consideration any carbon offsets, tipping fees, or renewable energy credits. Ze-gen has plans to build its first commercial plant by 2012.

GreatPoint Energy is tackling the controversial problem of utilizing fossil fuels to “cleanly” produce energy. Dan Goldman, GPE’s executive vice president and chief financial officer, told our group that the advantages of GreatPoint’s process are low cost due to the lower temperature catalytic process, and an ability to capture CO2, which can be delivered for oil recovery or geological sequestration. GreatPoint is planning on starting operations on its $30 million feedstock testing facility in Somerset, MA, and signed an agreement with Datang Hyoin Electric Power Company in China to build and operate a plant that will process 1,000 tons per day of feedstock.

Innovative battery maker A123 Systems‘ technology went through multiple phases to reach its current level, said Andy Chu, director of the company’s automotive product line. Chu seemed confident that A123′s diversification into new areas including grid stabilization and airplane starter battery backups will ensure the company’s future success.

There is a small but loyal group of entrepreneurs and thought leaders in the U.S. who are advocating energy efficiency over energy generation. Advanced Electron Beams is one of these. AEB claims that its technology reduces energy usage by 40 to 90 percent in the surface sterilization, air treatment, and advanced curing industries, according to CEO Mitch Tyson. With a Fortune Global 1000 ranking behind them, AEB is seeking Series C funding to take their technology application to the next level.

Remember when Nanotechnology was the “it” word? You’ll be glad to know some of the nano materials have become commercial and are widely used now. Aspen Aerogels manufactures insulation materials that are two to eight times more thermally efficient than convention materials due to their nanoscale properties. Don Young, CEO of Aspen, told us that the firm is concentrating on reaching a reasonable earnings level for 2009 and diversifying into new segments.

The huge inflow of human and financial capital into the energy sector in recent years has necessitated the need for unambiguous information on the viability of technologies and business ideas. The Brattle Group has industry practice groups in most major traditional energy sectors and has developed expertise in pricing carbon and trading emissions. Dean Murphy, a principal at Brattle, felt the new administration should focus on controlling carbon emissions via a carbon tax rather than through the cap-and-trade program.

Lux Research, our last host on the trek, is a strategic advice firm that provides intelligence and consulting services in the nanotech, solar, power, water, and bio-sciences sectors. Lux Research analysts gather critical information by visiting and talking to firms in the specific sectors, according to president Matt Nordan. He emphasized a continuing need for critical analysis as we move to large-scale investing where the tolerance for market and technical risk is low.

Our interactions with so many energetic and exciting entrepreneurs, investors, and thought leaders rejuvenated our group. Leaving the classrooms to witness innovative technologies in person was a rejuvenating experience for me personally. We are looking forward to being part of a revolutionary energy innovation phase in our history.

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Boston Scientific (NYSE:BSX), the Natick, MA-based medical devices giant, reports that it has acquired drug-eluting stent developer Labcoat, headquartered in Galway, Ireland. Labcoat has developed technology to produce ultra-thin coatings of biodegradable polymers and drugs on the outer surface of coronary stents, which are designed to prop open arteries after surgeries to remove plaques. Financial terms of the deal weren’t disclosed.

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These are the salad days for the Boston area’s developers of alternative energy and clean technologies. Such firms had no problem landing big deals with corporate partners, governments, and investors in 2008.

At the risk of sounding whimsical, the standout cleantech deals in 2008 provoked thoughts of a not-so-distant future when, for example, advanced batteries developed in the Boston area power everyday cars in Kendall Square. Imagine the day when we (or most of us, at least) turn on the lights, knowing that, say, 25 percent of our electricity comes from renewable sources such as sunlight, wind, and rising tides.

Similar to how we at Xconomy compiled a 2008 list of biotech deals yesterday, the cleantech deals in the list that follows weren’t selected based on dollar values alone, but a combination of value, innovation, and local impact—especially the latter, because of our focus on hyper-local business coverage.

Here is our list of 2008 cleantech deals to remember:

A123 Land Auto Deal, Seeks IPO … Next Page »

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Transmolecular, a Cambridge, MA-based biotech firm, reports that the FDA has agreed to consider a filing for approval of its lead anti-cancer drug (TM601) if the molecule meets goals of a late-stage clinical trial, under the agency’s so-called Special Protocol Assessment process. The trial will test the molecule—derived from yellow scorpion venom—as a treatment for patients with lethal brain tumors called glioblastoma multiforme.

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Biogen Idec (NASDAQ:BIIB) confirmed yesterday that the biotech company plans to move its corporate headquarters from Cambridge, MA, to a site in Weston, MA, in 2010, the Boston Business Journal reports. A company spokeswoman told the BBJ that the firm has recently inked a lease on 350,000 square feet of office space in the Boston suburb, where up to 600 Biogen employees will move from the current headquarters at 14 Cambridge Center.

Rebecca back in October wrote about speculation about the big biotech’s plans to relocate its headquarters, after the story broke in the Boston Globe. The Globe reports this morning that Biogen says its headquarters will be at an undeveloped site at the junction of Routes 20 and 128 in Weston.

Though Biogen’s corporate offices will move, company spokeswoman Jennifer Neiman told the BBJ, the biotech plans to continue operations in 400,000 square feet of lab space and 200,000 square feet of manufacturing space in Cambridge. Biogen will join Waltham, MA-based Immunogen (NASDAQ:IMGN) and other biotechs to recently relocate headquarters from Cambridge to the western suburbs, where office rents and parking costs are generally less expensive than Cambridge rates.

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Michael Jones has an unusual perspective on the defense industry for a guy who oversees a non-profit industry group for San Diego’s defense and homeland security companies.

While the defense industry abounds with examples of advanced technologies, “big defense companies are not doing innovation,” says Jones, chairman and CEO of The Security Network. “They’ll even tell you that they’re not really innovators. What they want to do are big projects that combine technologies. They’re essentially big systems integrators.”

So where does innovation come from in the defense industry?

In San Diego , a lot of it comes through the small companies that belong to The Security Network. The organization, formed in 2004, coordinates the interests of government and law enforcement agencies, defense companies, university laboratories and other interest groups in the San Diego region. Sometimes that involves sponsoring events, such as the one-day forum held last week on “Maritime Law Enforcement and Security.” Sometimes that involves identifying and developing new technologies sought by Gary Wang, the chief technology officer at SPAWAR, the Navy’s San Diego-based Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command.

SPAWAR is a major Navy acquisition arm with more than 7,500 employees that awards billions of dollars in contracts each year—primarily to advance developments in C4ISR, a military acronym for command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance.

So how does The Security Network work with Wang, who oversees SPAWAR’s science and technology labs on Point Loma?

“The world that the DoD (Department of Defense) and defense contractors live in is very insular,” Jones says. “So (Wang) is interested in finding new technologies so the government doesn’t waste a lot of time and money trying to develop something that already exists. Because if you’re a big contractor like Lockheed Martin, you don’t care if the technology the government wants already exists somewhere else. You want the government to pay you to develop the technology yourself.”

So The Security Network serves an important role, Jones says. “We try to find innovative, … Next Page »

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