Chinese visitors watch business hatch at USF

Six officials from China's Ministry of Commerce visited the business incubator at the University of South Florida in Tampa last week. Their mission? Learn how to nurture biotech startups.

Bill Rowland, the Tampa consultant who organized the officials' visit, said Wang Hui, head of the delegation and director general of the department of science and technology at the ministry, had plenty of questions. Among his areas of interest: intellectual property, patent protection and the transfer of technology from a university to private use.

"He wanted to know how the incubator was structured, how the finances work and how companies go public," Rowland said of Wang, the most senior official on the tour, which also stopped in Washington, New York, Detroit and Denver. "He said China has 100 incubators but the sense I got was that they were not nearly as productive as they found the one at USF to be."

Rowland said it shouldn't be surprising the Chinese, who have relied on a planned economy for more than 50 years, should be interested in how free enterprise works. Now who's going to explain the dot-com bust to them?

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