TUSIAD held its fourth “Discover Corporate America” program (DCA) during the week of October 22-26, 2007 in the cities of Washington DC, Atlanta, GA, and Austin, TX. Five business leaders from various industries in Turkey participated in the program, which introduced them to current strategies for promoting research and development at federal and state governmental agencies, research institutions, and successful corporations operating in the United States. The participants represented an array of industries in Turkey including food and beverage, media, and defense engineering. They were (pictured from left to right): Liam Hardy, Research Assistant of TUSIAD-US, Sissian Özinci, Director of Business Development of Dogan Holding, Çigdem Topal, Research Assistant of TUSIAD, Ugur Büyükçulcu, Deputy General Manager of the Hediye Flour Factory, Tanzar Dinçer, Top Advisor at Ortadaogu Mühendislik, Aydin Acun, Consultant to the CEO of Ülker Yildiz Holding, and Ahmet Kabalak, Vice Chairman of Hediye Flour Factory.

The group began its stay in the United States on the morning of Monday October 22 with meetings in Washington, DC. TUSIAD-US president Abdullah Akyuz greeted the participants and introduced them to the program. They then received a briefing from Chad Evans from the Council on Competitiveness. Mr. Evans, who will also speak this upcoming November at the TUSIAD/Sabanci Competitiveness Forum in Istanbul, gave an overview of the current state of competitiveness in the U.S., speaking on everything from entrepreneurship to education. Ben Carliner of the Economic Strategy Institute then addressed the group with a presentation about the Nordic model of public policy, which included an in-depth analysis of how Finland has spurred economic development. Dr. Osman Shinaishin of the National Science Foundation next spoke to the assembly about how his organization uses federal grant money to encourage research and development internationally; and lastly Dr. Kim Pham of the National Institutes of Health described work that NIH does to promote research in health studies – such as in the area of sleep deprivation.

Following these meetings, Soner Çaðaptay of the Washington Institute for Near East policy spoke with the group over lunch about the current state of US-Turkish relations. Mr. Çaðaptay addressed the issue of the House Resolution, which designates the killing of Armenians during WWI as genocide as well as the problem of increased PKK activity in Northern Iraq and the US failure to contain this new threat.

On Monday afternoon, the delegates traveled to the University of Maryland, where they met with leaders of the Maryland Technology Enterprise Institute (MTECH). MTECH has a number of programs that encourage entrepreneurship and job growth in the state of Maryland. Dr. David Barbe gave an overview of the organization, while Dr. Martha Connolly talked about MIPS, an industrial partnership program that has commercialized a number of successful products including most recently a new treatment for cancer of the esophagus. Dean Chang spoke about the TAP program, an incubator for technology start-up companies, and Jim Chung told the group about VentureAccelerator, a mentoring program for entrepreneurs who are students and faculty at the University of Maryland.

Tuesday morning, the group traveled to Marrieta, GA, the home of the production lines of Lockheed Martin’s C-130J tactical transport aircrafts and F-22 Raptor fighter jets. After a meeting with Aeronautics Business Development Vice President Jim Grant, C-130J Business Development Analyst Jon Hawley, Business Development Analyst Reggie Shareef, & Engineering Site Director Karen Albrecht, Mr. Hawley took the group on an exciting tour of the C-130J production line. (Lockheed also proudly informed the group that it has a new facility in Turkey that produces F-35 Joint Strike Fighter jets).

The participants next visited the Georgia Institute of Technology’s Enterprise Innovation Institute on Tuesday afternoon. Here they met with Dr. Ned Ellington, Director of the Strategic Partners Office, Stephen Fleming, Chief Commercialization Officer, and Bertrand Comet-Barthe, Director of International Programs. The Enterprise Innovation Institute works closely to create industrial partnerships between companies and the University – thus helping enterprises improve their competitiveness through the application of science, technology and innovation. Their programs help commercialize new technologies and help start-up companies compete through incubation.

Turner Broadcasting and the CNN Center hosted the participants on Wednesday morning. Chris Sumsky from the department of research and development spoke about Turner’s efforts to adapt to changing technologies in the media industry, and Mike McCarthy, Managing Editor for CNN International, spoke to the group about CNN’s activities all around the world. Following these meetings, the group made a tour of CNN’s studios and met with the host of World Report, Guillermo Arduino.

On Wednesday afternoon, the group had a lunch meeting with Afzaal Malik, Public Affairs and Communications Director for Central Europe, Eurasia, and the Middle East for the Coca-Cola Company, as well as with R. Jackson Kelly, Vice President of Coca-Cola International and Director of Marketing Services. They discussed Coca-Cola’s global presence and the energy it takes to coordinate such a vast corporation. Following the meeting, the participants toured the New World Coke museum in downtown Atlanta.

After making their way to Austin, TX, the participants met on Thursday morning with Siddhartha Chatterjee, Director of the IBM Austin Research Laboratory. Dr. Chatterjee spoke to the group about IBM’s Global Tehcnology Outlook and IBM’s activities to promote technological advances; this included an in-depth conversation about digital communities and their impact at IBM. The group took a tour of the Solutions Experience Lab, where they saw state-of-the-art technology used for digitizing and automatically updating health records, tracking shipment orders, and even for locating brands at the supermarket. Paul Baffes then discussed the innovation strategy used at IBM and answered questions about the innovation process.

On Thursday afternoon, the group visited Sun Microsystems’ facilities in Austin. Software Group Senior Manager & Austin Site Leader Fadi Salem and Data Operations Manager Gary Cassens addressed the group. After giving a brief overview of Sun, its history in the Austin area, and its activities in producing and engineering computer hardware, they gave the group a tour of Sun’s computer ranch, which is made up of a vast number of servers that allow Sun employees to access data from anywhere in the world without fear of a system crash. In addition, they showed the participants a server using the brand new UltraSPARC T2 System Chip processor – their most state-of-the-art processor to date.

The group met with Director of Corporate Relations of SEMATECH Anne Englander and Senior Sales Manager Doug Woodul of ATDF on Friday morning. Each gave overviews of their respective organizations. SEMATECH, a consortium of semiconductor companies, has a platform for corporations to collaborate on R&D when such activity is appropriate and beneficial for the industry as a whole. ATDF, on the other hand, is an R&D foundry that fosters new technologies in the semiconductor and high-tech industry. After the meeting, the group received a special tour of ATDF’s research laboratory.

The program ended on Friday afternoon. Isaach Barchus of the IC2 Institute at the University of Texas-Austin hosted the group at the University’s incubator program. Mr. Barchus discussed the companies and products that have graduated from the program.