Simon Wood

- Simon Wood, President, U of S Technologies Inc.
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Leading the expansion of UST is the company's new president and CEO, Simon Wood, Ph.D., CChem, FRSC.His appointment was officially announced in March of 1997.

During the past few weeks, Wood has been busy recruiting UST's new staff members.
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After earning a Ph.D. in pharmaceutical chemistry, Wood taught at industry-oriented and medical research universities in the U.K. and South Africa.

He has worked for corporate conglomerates on three continents."I've been around a lot in various industries, and have set up numerous businesses, from the reasonably small to quite large."

Wood emigrated to South Africa at the age of 25, to accept a management position as a group leader for the Atomic Energy Corporation.He progressed up the corporate ladder, working for a variety of corporations, and becoming more and more interested in "developing businesses and projects."

After joining SASOL, a corporation which manufactures petrochemicals from coal, Wood really began to collect frequent flyer miles as a technical marketing manager."One trip was 26,000 miles in ten days," says Wood.

Wood was then headhunted to join Johnson Matthey, a multi-billion dollar global precious metals conglomerate with head offices in the U.K. "I had four postions with them, moving up into senior management.
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They didn't say it was the coldest," laughs Wood.

Wood did consulting work in Regina, assisting in business start-ups.He then joined the staff of PrairieChem Inc."They had created a new division that specialized in analytical products and process systems," says Wood.

"I was taken on to grow this division, and was quite pleased with the way things worked out.They gave me quite a free hand to do things, to look for new product lines and put new concepts together, melding the equipment into engineered packages that you could sell."Over a 15 month period, the PrairieChem division more than tripled its sales under Wood's direction, into several million dollars.

Wood says there are three kinds of managers: "those who set up businesses, those who restructure them or close them down, and those who manage them on a day-to-day basis.

"I'm good at looking for ideas, and turning those ideas into a business - taking something from the drawing board, turning it into a business, and then finding the people to run it.I'm not that interested in running it on a day-to-day basis."

Wood says that he has always viewed information as a tool.
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Wood is excited about the challenges that await in his position as president of UST.
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We're setting up new businesses all the time," says Wood.

"I'm a great believer in industry and universities co-operating with each other.Universities must continue fundamental "blue sky" research, but there are lots of opportunities here for commercialization."

Wood says that the reputation of Innovation Place and its proximity to the University of Saskatchewan makes his job easier."People now know where Saska‘what' is.That really helps to build relationships and opportunities.As well, if you want to set up a new business, Innovation Place is quite accommodating in offering office space and facilities at reasonable rates, if the business meets their criteria."

Wood identifies agriculture, medical research and information technologies as particular strengths of the University of Saskatchewan.

"I want to balance our portfolio of products, so we have projects that range from short-term to long-term development," says Wood."I want to look at developing more spin-off companies."

Since its conception, UST has maintained a firm ‘Saskatchewan-first' policy on development."We search for investors/partners in Saskatchewan first, for companies that want to set up businesses here, before we consider going out of province," says Wood.

UST will continue to be an important contributer to the economic health of the University of Saskatchewan."Anything that contributes financially to the University is of economic value.It's important for all the stakeholders to realize that we can protect the intellectual property that is being developed here for the good of as many people as possible," says Wood.

"It is very important to protect intellectual property.One computer diskette can copy six months worth of work.If you don't make an effort to protect this property, you lose the value of that research."

With the expansion of UST's staff, Wood says the company will now be in a position to be "proactive" in seeking inventions or ideas with commercial potential."When there was only one person in this office, people came in and spoke to him.We'll be going out as a proactive team of people, gathering information."

The expansion of UST is also a sign of the University of Saskatchewan's commitment to facilitating economic growth through research."There is a commitment here to do this.It puts the University of Saskatchewan on the same basis as other universities in western Canada," says Wood.

UST has a definite growth plan which Wood fully expects to achieve."We aim to create quite a few spin-off companies.If we don't create at least five to ten in the next one to two years, I would be very surprised," says Wood.