Hot off the presses: The UC Davis Graduate School of Management's Spring 2010 Innovator magazine includes a cover story -- The Drivetrain of Sustainability: Powering Innovation in Clean Tech -- profiling, among others, Octus and our team. Here's an excerpt:
For a virtual case study in the power of GSM networking, look no further than Octus Energy.
Davis-based Octus specializes in reducing energy use for its clients by applying an array of tools and approaches, from lighting and HVAC retrofits to smart energy automation and creative project financing. “We try to cut a building’s utility bill in half,” says alumnus Chris Soderquist ’98, CEO and president of Octus.
The company recently licensed Wickool®, a passive evaporative cooling technology from UC Davis that promises to pay for itself in three years through energy savings. Within five months of the first napkin sketch, Wal-Mart was trying it out atop a West Sacramento store and it’s now installed on a Target retail store’s roof-top air conditioners.
“It wouldn’t have happened without the UC Davis Western Cooling Efficiency Center and without the GSM,” says Soderquist. The company has a distinct Davis flavor to it. “We have five GSM grads out of seven people at the company… because of our networks.”
On top of that, several of the GSM connections also have been—or still are—involved in other local start-ups that grew out of the Big Bang! or other university programs. “The greatest untapped asset the GSM has is its alumni and their networks,” Soderquist says.
Soderquist sees UC Davis as rich in the expertise, technologies, networks and relationships needed to become a hotbed for clean tech. And Dean Currall notes that a reputation for world-class science and connections with government will attract more financial and social capital to seed start-ups.
“It would be difficult to argue,” Soderquist says, “that there’s a better place to build a company in the cleantech area… than Davis.”
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