incubator also would help to seed the innovation economy in San Diego and elsewhere. The zoo offers plenty of examples, including:
—Mirasol display technology under development since the mid-1990s, and now under auspices of San Diego-based Qualcomm (NASDAQ: [[ticker:QCOM]]), generates colors for mobile phone displays and e-book readers by mimicking the interference of reflected light by microscopic scales on the iridescent surface of the morpho butterfly’s wings.
—In the life sciences, San Diego’s Biomatrica has developed DNA and RNA preservation technology based on anhydrobiosis, a dehydration process that occurs in nature with brine shrimp and other organisms.
—WhalePower, a Toronto-based wind power company, designed its turbine blades based on the tubercles (bumps) on the fins of humpback whales. Co-founder and biologist Frank Fish of West Chester, PA, determined that the bumps reduce drag, enabling the blades to turn at lower wind speeds.
To head its new biomimicry center, the zoo named Larry Stambaugh, 65, a local corporate leader who led San Diego-based Maxim Pharmaceuticals, a once-prominent drug developer that was sold amid some acrimony at the end of 2005.
Stambaugh, who told me he’s spent years in-licensing and out-licensing technologies, says the incubator’s prime directive is moving bio-inspired innovations toward commercialization.
“Some ideas would be advanced to a working model or proof of principle, and then licensed,” Stambaugh says. “Sometimes, companies would come to us and we’ll jointly develop the idea. We have the know-how among our scientists at the zoo.”
Stambaugh says the goal is to make the process of innovation development work quicker, faster, and better. “One of the most profound
