Proctor & Gamble to work with schools

CINCINNATI (AP) - Ohio is turning to the world's largest consumer products company for help in boosting its sluggish economy.

Gov. Ted Strickland said Tuesday in his State of the State address that details are being worked out for a partnership between the Procter & Gamble Co. and Ohio's university system that would speed up and bolster research teamwork between the company and universities. He said that will give the schools unprecedented opportunities for developing new products and getting them to market.

"We are pursuing a groundbreaking agreement that will help our university system turn great ideas into new products and new jobs," Strickland said in Columbus. The Democratic governor faces re-election this year with a struggling Ohio economy that has a 10.9 percent unemployment rate.

He said the state wants to build private-public partnerships to "guide the energies of private entities toward work that advances Ohio. He suggested the P&G agreement could be a model for the automotive industry and other companies in the state.

The governor said P&G gets the benefit of tapping into innovative thinkers in the system that includes 13 four-year schools, including Ohio State University. P&G also pointed out the advantage of proximity to college partners for working together.

"We are excited about developing this new relationship across the university system in Ohio, and the opportunity to find even more breakthroughs close to home," Jeff Weedman, the company's vice president for global business development, said in a statement.

P&G has been increasingly interested in working with universities as part of an open innovation push in the past decade to attract more ideas from outside the company.

The Cincinnati-based maker of such products as Pampers diapers and Gillette shavers already has close ties with the University of Cincinnati, including working together to start a UC computer simulation center. P&G last year honored UC as its "university partner of the year," for helping create the Live Well Collaborative to design new products for people who are 50 or older.

Eric Fingerhut, chancellor of the state Board of Regents, said the university system agreement is based on the UC relationship, and could be in place by the middle of this year. Details weren't released immediately. He said businesses and universities have historically had difficulties working out such accords.

"If we can pull it off with Procter and Gamble, which is one of the largest companies in the world, we can clearly do it with other sectors, other companies," Fingerhut said, adding that it's important that the agreement help P&G, too.

"Remember, a company like Procter and Gamble is a global company; they could work with innovators all over the world, they'll work with any university in the world," he said. "So we need to make ourselves attractive to them to want to work with Ohio's universities."

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AP reporter Andrew Welsh-Huggins in Columbus contributed to this report.