Arizona State University is the key driver behind the Center's focus on interactivity, creating an environment where individual entrepreneurs, global enterprises, ASU researchers and community members connect. At SkySong, ASU will locate its entrepreneurial training and technology transfer units in addition to some of its globally-focused initiatives, and engineering and technology research programs.
SkySong tenants will benefit from close association with Arizona State University in the following areas:
- Business connections: access to new workforce, commercialize ASU research, entrepreneurial support
- Research connections: Access to advanced university laboratories and equipment and partnership opportunities with ASU researchers
- Educational connections: teaching/learning opportunities, access to ASU libraries, intellectual capital
- Infrastructure and recreation connections: links to ASU computing/IT resources and recreational facilities like the Student Recreation Complex and Karsten Golf Course.
ASU has created unprecedented ways to work with new kinds of partnerships. We are entrepreneurial pioneers at the department, college, school, and university levels. Big institutions are known to be slow - but at ASU we adjust quickly to change and new situations.
For example, ASU was chosen after a year-long national competition by the U.S. Army for a $43.7 million cooperative agreement to develop a flexible, low-power computer display. ASU had the necessary facilities and created critical relationships with private sector partners. We are now developing a new generation of flexible computer displays with significant potential in many markets.
ASU is the only university to house a Google operational office. Intel hires more engineers from ASU than from any other place in the world. Private investments in the university from successful entrepreneurs and successful business people are unprecedented.