Ora Smith

Ora Smith consults on projects in the technology sector. His clients include companies, organizations, and universities engaged in technology development, commercialization, and transfer. Previously, he was CEO of Illinois Superconductor Corporation, (now ISCO International) a leader in using external innovation to bring high temperature superconductors into the commercial wireless equipment marketplace.

Mr. Smith served as vice president and chief marketing officer at Conductus. Both ISCO and Conductus were cited in the April 2005 Spectrum magazine as among the top seven most innovative IPO’s out of 823 companies that went public from 1993-2002.

At Rockwell International, Mr. Smith was a corporate R&D lab director and the company’s corporate director of external technology development. He also served as the Industrial Research Institute (IRI) Fellow in the White House Science Office while at Rockwell.

Mr. Smith was president of the Science and Technology Campus Corporation for over five years. This organization operates a research park and provides technology commercialization functions in affiliation with Ohio State University. He has served on various boards of directors.

Mr. Smith received his SB and SM degrees in mechanical engineering from MIT and his JD from Harvard Law School.

Listen to Mr. Smith's webinars, Assessing the Commercialization Potential of New Innovations, April 2009 and Identifying Sources for External Innovation - How Companies Innovate From the Outside In, June 2008. Mr. Smith is the instructor for the Caltech Industrial Relations Center course, Acquiring External Technology to Drive Innovation.