by Zac Ezzone – Staff writer, Triangle Business Journal

With scorching temperatures and little shelter, Death Valley can be a treacherous place for visitors to be stranded.

For entrepreneurs, crossing a different “valley of death” can be just as perilous. In research and development, the “valley of death” is where new ideas die — that space where technologies show promise but are deemed too risky to attract the investments they need to survive.

Eric Muth understands first-hand the challenges of crossing this valley.

Before becoming vice chancellor for research at North Carolina A&T State University, he and a colleague at Clemson University received federal and state funding to develop a wrist-worn device that tracked the number of bites a person takes while eating.

After years of work on the Bite Counter, Muth had a commercial-ready product by the late 2000s that he took to trade shows and marketed on the company’s website. But the concept never took off. The introduction of smartwatches from companies like Apple didn’t help, but Muth said the company ran into other challenges as well. The company got caught in the valley of death — a good idea that lacked funding.

Researchers and early stage companies throughout North Carolina, especially outside the Triangle, often face similar fates. And by some measures, North Carolina has lagged in innovation — alarming business leaders and leading the General Assembly to shovel millions of dollars to a relatively young nonprofit to tackle this problem.

NCInnovation was formed to support turning university research into commercial opportunities. The group is focused on regions outside the Triangle, where the major research universities at Duke, N.C. State and UNC-Chapel Hill have driven success not seen in other parts of the state. As the Triangle prospers, other regions of the state watch as jobs are eliminated and populations decline.

Read the entire article at the Trangle Business Journal