Building wealth is John Butler’s business. As the director of the IC2 Institute, his mission is to bring together academia, the business world and government to help create prosperity—in the United States as well as abroad.“At IC2 we study the mechanisms of capitalism,” said Butler, management professor at the McCombs School of Business. “That includes everything from the startup process to the institutions that help businesses succeed.”One of the organizations IC2 is currently partnering with is TechBA, a shared program between the Mexican Ministry of the Economy and the United States-Mexico Foundation for Science. The purpose of TechBA is to support Mexican companies looking to bring products and services into the global marketplace.
That’s where IC2 — a research unit at The University of Texas at Austin — comes in. TechBA chose to work with IC2 because of its 30-year track record of job acceleration and wealth creation.
“The question became, how can you enhance the education efforts in Mexico for wealth creation and business startups?” Butler said. “TechBA is designed to take Mexican companies in different stages. Some already have $10 million in sales, some already have $3 million and some are startups. We work with them and help them enhance their ability to scale and to develop into the North American market. TechBA is probably the first program that is concentrated on wealth creation rather than labor issues.”
Butler said that TechBA chooses the companies and IC2 brings the know-how to help “do what we know how to do: create jobs, create companies and create wealth.”
A key asset within IC2 that aids in developing the Mexican companies for the global market is the Austin Technology Incubator (ATI). One of the most successful technical business incubators in the United States, ATI has graduated 65 companies that have generated $1.2 billion in revenue.
ATI supports the growth and development of emerging technology companies by providing services, such as strategic advice, access to financing, marketing and public relations support, mentoring and turn-key infrastructure.
ATI also serves as an entrepreneurship learning laboratory for students and faculty. University of Texas students represent business, law, information systems, communication, and computer science disciplines, offering support with product development, business strategy, market research and network administration.
“ATI is a laboratory for the study of capitalism and wealth creation,” Butler said. “When ATI was launched it was all about software. Now we are about wireless and clean energy. We are trying to stay ahead of the curve because we are a university, which means we can experiment. We are not interested in solving a problem that’s already solved.”
