UC Irvine Beall Applied Innovation’s new Executive Director and UCI’s Chief Innovation Officer will help innovators translate their research to the marketplace and build on Southern California’s expanding innovation culture.

Collaboration has many meanings to different communities, and at UCI Beall Applied Innovation, it represents working together to make a dream a reality. Many great innovations, companies and organizations have been built on a dream of bettering society and many people have traveled far to make those dreams happen in America.

Errol Arkilic, Ph.D., wants to help BAI continue to build this American dream and has made it a keen pursuit to support first-generation college students, and many others, chasing their dreams and turning them into realities. As UC Irvine (UCI) Beall Applied Innovation’s executive director and UCI’s chief innovation officer, Arkilic plans to pave the way for first-generation college students and is a firm believer in the modern and inclusive American dream.

“Innovation and entrepreneurship are the perfect vehicles for helping socioeconomic mobility,” said Arkilic. “The U.S. is a champion of enterprise and entrepreneurs … there’s no better way to create wealth than to do it developing new products and services.”

The number of first-generation undergraduates has gradually increased over the years, with more than 50% of UCI’s incoming freshmen class of 2019 identifying as first-generation students. This is more than double UCI’s Ivy League counterparts, according to a 2020 Statista report.

“We are helping to reduce the barriers [At Applied Innovation], to access to markets, talent, resources and technology,” said Arkilic. “We are right alongside the entrepreneurs that are trying to move ideas into the market. Through supporting those innovation capacities, we are directly contributing to supporting those American dreams that include entrepreneurship.”

No stranger to innovation and entrepreneurship, Arkilic spent nearly a decade at the National Science Foundation and in 2011, founded the Innovation Corps (I-Corps) program, which is now a nationally recognized customer discovery program that helps researchers gain real-world insights into starting a business and is also a program offered through Applied Innovation. Arkilic, who is particularly passionate about moving technology into the marketplace, says the intent of the program is to address critical gaps as technologies are coming out of labs and are facing four critical challenges. Arkilic built the I-Corps program to address the uncertainties of launching innovation, to remove the mystique of finding the first set of customers, to encourage collaboration and to help researchers understand if their research is useful to the marketplace.

“In policy circles around Washington D.C., there’s an ongoing battle between support for basic and applied research and a mental model that the two don’t mix,” said Arkilic. “It’s unfortunate and not true. That is, there’s another way of looking at research. Ask ‘what is the focus of the researcher?’ If the answer is simultaneously a desire for application and fundamental understanding, then the researcher is doing use-inspired research and a lot of exciting things happen when we support use-inspired research.”

Though the words “innovation” and “entrepreneurship” are often closely associated, Arkilic views innovation as building something new for the first time and demonstrating the value whereas entrepreneurship is more focused on gathering resources to explore an opportunity.

“When you get to a point where things are actually working for the first time, it’s a thrill like no other when you build something or assemble the resources to do something that hasn’t been done before,” said Arkilic.

Arkilic admires leaders like Steve Jobs from Apple and Elon Musk from Tesla who were and are both prolific innovators and entrepreneurs, but specifically regards Abraham Lincoln as someone who could motivate an entire nation with his ideas and words as a leader.

“He had integrity and knew how to bring teams together, defeat disparate viewpoints and assemble a common view,” said Arkilic. “He knew how to compromise and was an exceptional leader.”

After serving at the National Science Foundation, Arkilic founded Real Industry in 2015, a nonprofit organization that empowers university students to succeed in finding their dream jobs. In addition, he serves on the Board of Directors for several startups and is also is a co-founder and CEO of M34 Capital, Inc., a seed stage investment firm that works with entrepreneurs from academia to help translate their technology out of the lab and into the marketplace. He also taught at UC Berkeley in both the Haas School of Business and the Engineering School.

“Turning knowledge into products that make a difference is one role that’s appropriate for a university to support because universities, especially research universities, are responsible for knowledge creation and dissemination,” said Arkilic. “My thrill with tech transfer is the step in the process when new knowledge embodies technologies that are provided in a product or service.”

Arkilic sees Applied Innovation as the point place for taking new ideas and turning them into innovations that matter and solve problems. With UCI’s extensive research activities, new knowledge pours from its many departments among faculty, students and staff, and Arkilic wants to utilize the research capabilities and organize catalytic resources, such as small amounts of money, to help fund the difficult steps between research and marketplace.

“I think one of the hallmarks of the American dream is to seek out and utilize opportunities to contribute to human progress,” said Arkilic. “A great research-led, institution-grade education is a powerful way to support the American dream. It is supported [at UCI] unlike any other place in the country.”

Arkilic’s previous big city and tech-driven life of the Bay Area has now transferred to Irvine’s more sprawled out neighborhoods and sunny beaches. Arkilic admits to some calmer and warmer benefits of Southern California — including the great food and warmer, more swimmable ocean temperatures. He’s also got a knack for outdoor activities as well as a killer pizza recipe.

With Applied Innovation, Arkilic’s first focus is to help technologies make their way into the commercial space, citing the recently doubled research budget at UCI. He highlights the benefits of Applied Innovation’s Proof of Product Grant program, research translation and, calling back to his roots, the I-Corps program. In addition to these programs are other beneficial resources for entrepreneurs and innovators.

“An academic institution is a special place; it celebrates the generation of knowledge as valuable in and of itself. We have to understand that when knowledge is being generated, it can become even more valuable in the form of products and services that can effectively solve the problem that was being studied to begin with,” said Arkilic.

Learn more about Applied Innovation.

Main Photo: Ryan Mahar