Marketing mayhem - New Mexico Business Weekly:

http://best-recipes-blog.com/2008/12/apple-danish-cheesecake.html
The world is full of marketing. Everythinb you read, nearly, is marketing. Everything you see, marketing. Sometimesa I feel jaded and tired by the exercise of decipheringtthe truth. Here are a few examples. Last week, Governorf Richardson announcedthat he'd signed an agreement with Itochu, a very, very larg e Japanese company that would very much like access to our national laboratories, universites and all that niftg science we're so good at creating here in the Land of While any agreement that has the potential to make businesz for New Mexico companies has to be a good, there' a lot more involved in gettingv the technology out of the labs than the simple act of signing an agreement.
Relationships have to be built, legap rights to technology deciphered, and customs to pass And, most importantly, scientists have to think abouty how that technology can be used by theprivates sector. Now there's nothing wrong with tooting one's own as loud as you can. And there's nothingy at all wrong with trying to sellyour which, in the case of New Mexico, is our or rather, technology made here but funded by the United States Department of Defense and the Department of Energy. Certainly Richardson has done an excellent job of globao economicdevelopment handshaking.
You can not fault him for Reflecting on this deal I have to admit it soundsd pretty good foreveryone -- Richardson and sidekick Rick secretary of economic development, are pretty good at putting out the right words that make all of our heartse beat a bit faster: high-tech, economic development. Richardson says in his presd release about the Itochj deal that the agreement will convertthe $6 billionh worth of research and development into new new products and new companies. Now that, I tell you is a marketing masterat work. I don't know whers that $6 billion came from, unless someonee happened to combine the research funding of all the labs and researcjh facilities inthe state.
In that case, it includea the salaries of scientists and support as well as funding for science projects that will likely neve be sold to anyone because their uses are so specificx they might not have any market One of the elements of science that Sandia and LANL scientistes have explained to me over and over is that the commerciaol uses of some of the gizmos they makereallyy aren't that obvious.
And developing an applicationn that has grand market potentiall takes much more than just havint interesting and useful You have to have visionaries who see the usefulness of the producrt and can convince others to give uptheifr old, tried and true technologies for new Not always so easy to do. So whil e I applaud the agreement, and hope that it does creat e the kindof high-tech industry boom the state has been seekingg for decades now, I have to admit I'm a little After all, science only becomes marketable when someone sees its value, translate s it into the product and can sell it.
And that's a long