Innovation incentives win federal grant

From medical devices to software, from consumer products to social startups, getting technological ideas off the drawing board is the mission of a new "innovation corps" program hosted by Skidmore, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Siena College, and the University at Albany. Funded by a three-year $300,000 grant from the National Science Foundation, the New York State Capital Region I-Corps Site is one of about 50 around the country so far. Its goal is to help students, faculty, and staff in the area to develop their ideas, find customers, pinpoint markets, and prepare to launch businesses. Graduates of the program can apply for NSF's intensive I-Corps Team training and opportunities for startup funding.  

The I-Corps Site feeder program runs for eight weeks and provides small-scale funding along with training in customer discovery and market research, business coaching, and networking opportunities requiring 3–5 hours per week. 

The NSF's I-Corps programs are part of a growing movement in the US to accelerate the conversion of new academic discoveries into real-world goods and services. When Skidmore's Harder Professor of Business Administration, Cathy Hill, discussed the NSF grant opportunity in the Accelerate518 upstate-college entrepreneurship association, she and two A518 colleagues agreed to write a proposal for a regional I-Corps Site. Its acceptance for funding, she says, "is a feather in the Capital District’s cap."

While individuals may be admitted to an I-Corps program, preference is given to teams with a blend of competencies. The program guidelines define the ideal team as having an academic leader with expertise in the technical side of the plan, an entrepreneurial leader to guide the commercial research, and a mentor with experience in transitioning research ideas into the business world. When needed, the I-Corps Site coordinators can help find mentors to round out a team.

Upon acceptance to the program, applicants must submit budget proposals—for example, for materials to fabricate a prototype product, travel to conduct market research, or consulting services for shaping a social program.

Hill is the serving as faculty advisor for the first cohort of teams, starting later this month. Skidmore is fielding one team: Noam Kahn '18, Dhruv Singh '18 and Zack Jones '18, who won third place in the college's Freirich Business Plan Competition last spring for their mobile app to connect event DJs with their audience's music preferences. Participants will give very short pitches to the whole group as part of the orientation on Sept. 27; there will be four training seminars as well as smaller team meetings; and final presentations will be made on Nov. 17. The same team will pitch thier business plan to community investors in October.

I-Corps expects that by the end of eight weeks, participants will have initiated patent research, gathered data on market trends, analyzed competitors, learned how to find commercialization funding, prepared a preliminary business plan, and made a go or no-go decision on launching their startup—positioning them well to apply for the next level of I-Corps assistance in getting their ideas out into the marketplace.

Applications for the next session, in the spring of 2017, are now open.