He did, however, see room for growth in the rate in which those innovative ideas are turned into actual products and services.
"A lot of faculty have strong relationships with firms in the valley, and it's not too much of a surprise that UCSC is fertile ground in terms of the amount of relevant ideas," Ramirez said. "We capture a lot of them already, but we wanted an effort to make it more a part of our culture to make the most of these inventions."
Ramirez reached out to alumni for suggestions, and former UCSC computer and information sciences student Dan Heller, who launched his own startup company in 1990, answered the call.
Heller developed and founded the Center for Entrepreneurship, a multidisciplinary effort to give students training in what it takes to bring an idea to market and start a company.
Business Design Competition Winner Announced
SANTA CRUZ - Only one team in UC Santa Cruz's Business Design Competition could take home the $10,000 top prize Friday, but all the teams left with a better appreciation of the work of business giants such as Steve Jobs, Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg.
"I think after going through this process they really understand how hard it is to make it look easy," Mary Flannery, one of the competition organizers and a UCSC economic lecturer, said.
In all, nine teams participated for the $10,000 to cover business development costs and assistance from the local nonprofit Startup Lab in launching the company.
After four judges from UCSC and Silicon Valley companies deliberated for close to an hour on the presentations that they saw at the University Inn, the panel came back with a winner: Quaest, a test grading system for teachers that uses image recognition technology.