In May 2009, a group of organizations working in conjunction with the Cleveland Hungarian Development Panel plans to visit Hungarian technologists and companies. Their goal is to explore the possibilities of fostering business relationships of Hungarian researchers and businesses with polymer companies in Ohio.

The scouting team will be looking for opportunities that could include a wide range of possibilities from simple licensing, to deeper levels of collaboration and partnership, to joint venture or acquisition, to attracting companies and individuals to relocate to Ohio, where the polymer industry is #1 nationally and there is excellent access the North American market.

“Our other focus for the scouting trip and a larger trade mission next year will be on nanotechnology, since there is so much happening in this broad field,” according to Jeanette Grasselli Brown, co-chair of the Cleveland Hungarian Development Panel (CHDP) Economic Development program. “Nanotechnology can include almost anything because it is fundamentally involved with making things smaller. The broad category of nanomaterials and current, fast pace of breakthroughs can lead to everything from rapid medical advances to brand new categories of electronic devices,” she adds.

Up until fairly recently, little effort has been focused on attracting smaller companies from overseas to come to the region. “If you approach it the right way, there can be significant economic benefits and the opportunity for local job creation,” according to Tom Sudow, who has first-hand experience in this type of business attraction. As executive director of the Beachwood Chamber of Commerce for more than five years, he succeeded in attracting numerous businesses, including more than 20 international companies, to the innovative Cleveland, Ohio suburb.

According to an August 2007 article in Crain’s Cleveland Business, Sudow believes strongly in working with international companies. For the last couple of years, he has been hard at work leading a unique collaboration between TeamNEO and the Cleveland Clinic to attract bioscience and medical device companies to the Global Cardiovascular Innovation Center. “We’re constantly on the lookout for the best innovations from around the world,” he notes, adding that countries like Israel and Hungary are good sources for innovative solutions.

“We are looking for innovations that might otherwise be missed, especially smaller companies that don’t have the resources to get their technology or product to market,” says Lel Somogyi, Cleveland-area marketing consultant and member of the scouting team. “We are looking for the ‘disruptive breakthrough’ technologies. One such breakthrough might be TBK’s biodiesel fuel process, which is making the rounds of Europe’s inventors’ fairs, but has yet to truly move forward.”

With the focus on looking for “breakthrough” technologies and solutions to leapfrog the competition, Northeast Ohio businesses might just find what they are looking for in Hungary, with its tradition of excellence in math and the sciences. And Hungarian technologists and companies may well find the market opportunities that they are seeking in Northeast Ohio. “The secret is in making the people connections first,” concludes Jeanette Grasselli Brown. “And that is what we are working to do.”

Somogyi says that the principal goal of the scouting trip is “to find new technology, the intellectual property behind it, find what can be licensed, and use PolymerOhio to match NE Ohio’s companies with technology and manufacturing capability to what we find in Hungary.” “We are trying to do technology transfer between countries and regions, not just between universities or large companies or government agencies.”

“If we find potential technologies and products in Hungary, we want to help bring them to market and benefit both sides,” says Somogyi. “It’s important to see the win-win character of what we are doing. We have better manufacturing opportunities here. We can bring a company or technology from Hungary to Ohio, partner with them, and eventually build them up to the point where they can bring their technology back to the marketplace in Europe.”

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PolymerOhio, Inc. is a polymer industry-specific Ohio Edison Technology Center, which is funded by the Ohio Department of Development.  PolymerOhio focuses on enhancing the global competitiveness of the polymer industry, including companies from the plastics, rubber, bioproducts, and advanced materials segments.