Chad Hardaway

The Office of Economic Engagement (OEE) was formed in 2013 at the University of South Carolina to better connect businesses with the resources of a top-tier research institution.

The OEE offers businesses  one point of contact at the university. Four critical functions are now all housed under one roof: 1) technology commercialization, 2) the USC/Columbia Technology Incubator, 3) the Innovista Research campus, and 4) the Corporate Solutions Group.

Under this organizational structure, the Office of Economic Engagement builds academic and industry partnerships, facilitates the commercialization of research, connects new and existing businesses with university talent and resources, and fosters entrepreneurship and small business development.

This year, the University of South Carolina is starting a new graduate program, the MS in Technology Innovation and Entrepreneurial Engineering. It is the only graduate program in the State of South Carolina that places a high premium on students with an engineering and science background, blending their technical and business skills in an entrepreneurial way.

The following is a conversation with Chad Hardaway, the Associate Director of the Office of Economic Engagement at USC and an SCBIO Board Member.

South Carolina inventors are being granted patents faster than the national rate, a fact that could bode well for business in the Palmetto State.

About 1,600 patents were granted in 2018 with at least one South Carolina inventor’s name on the award. Compared to the nearly 170,000 patents granted across the United States, it’s not a huge amount.

While patents issued in 2018 were down somewhat compared to last year, scaling back 10 years to 2009 shows patents awarded with South Carolina ties have grown by about 108 percent. That is a faster rate than those granted to American inventors as a whole, as businesses large and small aimed to capture more intellectual property.

Read on for full article from the Charleston Post & Courier...