Alan and Susan Barich are the team leaders for Barich Business Group. We provide your project with leadership, public advocacy and results.
Susan Arcady Barich
Susan Barich responded to a request for proposal from the U.S. Small Business Administration's (SBA) pilot regional innovation cluster program in 2010. Barich was awarded one of 10 submittals funded from a field of 173 submitted from across the nation -- a two-year, $1.2 million SBA contract to develop a regional innovation cluster of technology companies from nearby Silicon Valley and across the world that dovetail their technologies into the agricultural sector of the Salinas and Pajaro Valleys of California's Central Coast in order to allow Ag to cut production, process and delivery costs and increase their profit margins.
Salinas Valley growers, such as Driscoll’s, Dole, Taylor Farms, Duda Farm Fresh Foods, Chiquita and Ocean Mist, produce as much as 80% of the nation’s fresh greens and 15% of the world’s fresh produce. As director of Project 17, Susan and her partner, Alan Barich, brought together growers, shippers, suppliers, scientists, technical-assistance providers, major research institutions and technology developers in think tank sessions, workshops and other technology showcasing events. The results -- growers are now working with technology developers and research institutions to implement technologies that reduce pollution, water usage and waste and increase the quality of the nation’s fresh food while adding to growers’ bottom lines.
Susan has a history of creating common cause. As associate director of Joint Venture: Silicon Valley Network’s environmental initiative, she founded and chaired the Silicon Valley Industry Education Advisory Board with regional colleges and universities, which brought environmental-science education into San Jose State University, so that Silicon Valley businesses could hire new environmental employees from the university. During that time, she also represented the City of San Jose at a United-Nations-sponsored conference on regional business clusters in Wuhan, China, where she delivered a paper on the development and nature of the greatest regional cluster in modern history, Silicon Valley. Susan was the director of communications for the Silicon Valley World Internet Center, showcasing emerging internet technologies; producing think tank sessions for clients such as IBM, Cisco, Amdocs and Deutche Telecom; and promoting innovation for the internet.
Susan spent 10 years as director of the Marina Technology Cluster, a business incubator developed as part of the Fort-Ord-base-closure conversion plan. During this time, she founded the Monterey Bay Regional Business Plan Competition. She served for 15 years on the advisory board of the Environmental Business Cluster (EBC) in San Jose, established and operated under the guidance of Jim Robbins of Business Cluster Development. As a consultant to Jim and the EBC, Susan and Alan Barich helped the California Energy Commission to improve California’s energy-technology-commercialization rate from 5% to 55% over a four-year period.
In addition to being awarded the $1.2-million 2010 SBA RIC contract, since 1998, Susan has garnered and managed $4.1 million in grant funds from the State of California and the California Community Colleges’ Chancellor’s office. Susan holds an A.A. in Journalism from Shasta College and a B.A. in Journalism with an emphasis on Public Relations from San José State University.
Alan C Barich
Alan Barich has been a partner in managing Project 17 and Barich Alexander, providing business-management consulting to both technology and agricultural enterprises. Though an engineer by training and education, Alan's corporate career was one of creating and growing business units. His 30 years of engineering, sales, marketing and general management experience include complete profit and loss responsibility in the power-generation industry, selling into and managing projects worldwide. Alan worked inside start-up companies for 8 years and has been consulting to start-ups for 16. He has run small, privately owned businesses as well as large divisions of publicly-held enterprises. He has turned around small companies by managing cash flow and customer confidence.
Alan worked up through the ranks of the Enterprise Engine Company, an engine-manufacturing division of both Transamerica Delaval and, later, IMO Industries, from field engineer to sales and marketing to customer service to general manager of the division. Alan was recruited to create the TurboCare Division of IMO Industries -- which Siemens now operates as a cash cow -- from 5 former competitors servicing the after-market needs of turbo machinery world-wide. After successfully positioning TurbCare in the market, Alan worked with start-up companies in Silicon Valley, then provided turn-around general management for a failing aftermarket medium-speed Diesel engine company in northern California, managing their cash flow and client relations to bring them back to profitability. For 10 years, Alan was vice-president of a privately held warehousing and logistics company in Hayward, managing all aspects of the business.
Through the Environmental Business Cluster in San José, California, Alan has consulted to clean-tech entrepreneurs through a contract with the California Energy Commission in the areas of geothermal, wind and electricity-conservation on the grid, helping the agency to increase California’s energy-technology-commercialization rate from 5% to 55% over a four-year period. Alan holds a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from California Polytechnic University at San Luis Obispo.
Dr. Susan J. Duggan
Dr. Susan J. Duggan provides collaborative think-tank-session design, development and delivery to Barich Alexander regional innovation cluster clients.
Think tank sessions that bring together competitors and vendors to solve common cluster problems have proven to be one of the most valuable activities of cluster development.
Dr. Duggan is responsible for outreach to and initial communication with cluster industry members, seeking their views on regional problems and bringing them to an understanding of the desired outcome of the sessions before they begin. Dr. Duggan also designs think-tank methodology that will result in the greatest impact on common challenges while preserving corporate confidentiality. As a result, she is responsible for shepherding cluster participants to the identification of common goals and the achievement of common solutions.
Dr. Duggan's think tank sessions have provided a forum for the establishment of community among cluster participants who have traditionally been rigidly silo'd competitors, as they work together both inside and outside the think-tank-session environment to adopt processes and technologies that help them meet their bottom-line objectives. The result is a cluster of solution-providing businesses that serve the target industry.
Dr. Duggan has been chief strategist for the U.S. Department of Defense's Language Flagship language education program. She served as senior strategist for The Language Flagship, a federal initiative to support advanced language education in the United States. In that capacity she established the brand identity for the U.S.-wide mission and engaged the business sector in the support of educational change. In 1996, Dr. Duggan co-founded the Silicon Valley World Internet Center, an internationally recognized think tank and showcase for the advancement of Internet-related technologies and markets working with such clients as Deutsche Telekom, SAP, Fujitsu and IBM. With a call for collaboration among businesspeople, engineers and end-users, she designed a methodology for conducting effective "think tank sessions" for harnessing innovative product and market ideas that she has deployed in many countries around the world. She recently created the Smart World Center -- the successor organization to the World Internet Center -- in order to work with a broad variety of end-users seeking “smart” technologies for the challenges their industries face. A Fulbright Scholar to Germany and Fellow of the Alexander-von-Humboldt Foundation, she holds a Ph.D. and Masters in Education/Political Science, and a B.A. in Anthropology from Stanford University. She also holds a Masters in Political Science/International Relations from Université Laval. Dr. Duggan is proficient in German and French and conversant in Italian and Spanish.
Adam Davis
Adam Davis specializes in grant management and compliance and in incubator facilities and operations management. Adam has more than five years experience tracking clients and delivery of programs. He is adept at creating and submitting reports, invoices, funds requests and financial statements to meet grantor requirements, as well as working with granting agencies to clear special conditions. In addition, he manages client leases and incubator-owner operations issues, building cleanup and renovation, and vendor relationships. Adam was successful in bringing high-speed internet to the Marina Technology Cluster by working with AT&T for nearly two years to connect fiber to the incubator's remote airport location at a reduced cost to the City of Marina. Adam is the "get it done" guy, whether with a computer or a hammer and nail. From grants management and reporting to facilities management, he does it all.