Iowa’s newly appointed chief technology officer says a three-part economic development “road map” recently completed for the state by the Battelle Memorial Institute, an Ohio-based consulting group, will help Iowa advance its high-tech infrastructure.

“It’s going from a good place to a better place,” said Ted Crosbie. The Monsanto Co. scientist was appointed by Gov. Tom Vilsack to serve in the four-year volunteer position to coordinate the execution of the recommendations of the reports, which were commissioned by the Iowa Department of Economic Development. Battelle researchers made their recommendations, which outline strategies for enhancing Iowa’s biotechnology, advanced manufacturing and information technology sectors, using input from industry and government leaders from across the state,

“I’ve spent half of my (working) life running large businesses, and the other half managing large research departments, so I bring that experience with me,” said Crosbie, who has 27 years of experience in the biotechnology field in seed research. He will continue in his position as Monsanto’s vice president of global plant breeding.

Crosbie also serves on the executive committee of the Biosciences Alliance of Iowa, a non-profit organization formed a year ago to implement the recommendations of Battelle’s biosciences report, which was released in March 2004. Reports outlining recommended strategies for advanced manufacturing and information technology were released earlier this month.

Now that all three reports have been released, the IDED’s next step, which it will probably take in January, is to assemble a commercialization committee to bring together representatives from each of the three industry steering committees that were involved in the reports, said IDED Director Mary Lawyer.

Having the three reports in hand provides a unified strategy, she said. “I think what it does is get all the players on one page and focused on the strategies going forward in these reports,” she said.

The commercialization committee which will be headed by Crosbie as chief technology officer, will forward funding recommendations to the IDED board of directors for approval.

“The way I see the position is that I’m an adviser to the decision makers,” Crosbie said, “The decision makers are the IDED board, the governor, the Legislature, the Biosciences Alliance and whatever the two other groups are that emerge. My role will be as an adviser and perhaps an influencer on how to stimulate economic development based on technology in those three arenas.” Working under Crosbie will be a commercialization specialist who will work with the universities and companies to coordinate the commercialization of research by both the state and private universities into new products and service.

Crosbie said the collective experience gained from establishing the Biosciences Alliance, which has already recommended $17 million in funding for four bioscience initiatives, will be valuable in forming similar groups representing the advanced manufacturing and information technology sectors.

“We’re going to look for the overlaps,” he said. “There’s actually a lot of overlap between the groups. For instance, there are a lot of synergies between bioscience and information technology systems, as well as with manufacturing. … I think IT and manufacturing will take off even faster because there are so many overlaps with biosciences.”