One year and $425,000 later, local economic development officials have agreed that the best plan for growing Pittsburgh's technology industry is to create 80 new companies a year through 2015.

That would represent a huge jump from current levels of about 20 between the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University. But more startups are needed because Pittsburgh trails its peers in building its tech industry, said Donald Smith Jr., chairman of the Greater Oakland Keystone Innovation Zone, which commissioned the report. It was released yesterday .

Pittsburgh may be above the national average in spinning out companies from its universities, but according to the public and privately funded study, it has yet to create a critical mass of tech firms." What we've done is chosen to prioritize those actions that the board feels are the most immediate," Dr. Smith said.

The study, prepared by Columbus, Ohio-based research firm Battelle Institute and Santa Monica, Calif.-based think tank the Milken Institute, was expected to be unveiled to the public months ago, but was shrouded in secrecy as it was examined by more than two dozen experts culled from Pittsburgh's academic, business and nonprofit worlds.

The group pushed back the report's release date as they hammered out the details, choosing which of the studies' recommendations they could take on immediately and which would wait.

The report provides a road map for shedding Pittsburgh's smokestack roots and laying new ones in five areas of strength: information technology, alternative and clean energy, advanced materials, sophisticated electronics and robotics, and medical technologies.

Dr. Smith said the Keystone Innovation Zone is estimating that the blueprint's first steps will cost roughly $150 million. They will include raising public and private "seed" or "risk" funds used to help firms at their earliest stages; hiring additional experienced tech executives at local economic development groups to help guide upstart companies and developing a game plan for reeling-in larger "anchor" tech firms that will help jump start the fledgling industry.

Although not part of the initial steps, the costliest portion of blueprint is the roughly $600 million in public funds to be added to about $1 billion in private dollars to expand the Pittsburgh Technology Center.

While the bulk of the plan will channel money to the startup community, some also will go towards the universities, Dr. Smith noted.

"The region needs to have both a robust research presence but also robust business climate for startups to be founded funded and grow," Dr. Smith said.