A network- based view of the University Technology Transfer: boosting the go-to-market of innovation with the NSF I-Corps

Universities are important hubs and drivers of innovation and technology, but many inventions remain embryonic in nature: this implies that they need further development before their commercial value or potential can become imminent or evident, and one of the reasons why this has happened is a certain myopia in the governmental funds policies, that fund early stage products’ concept without focusing of the users’ insights as well as the creation if a stakeholders’ network to make the product more viable to commercialization. The I-Corps, with the Lean LaunchPad methodology and the customer discovery journey, represents a shift in this sense, since for the first time a governmental institution (the NSF) invests in the innovators’ education and networking outside the academia, and no more in the innovation. Therefore, based on the studies about the implementation of the network theory in the field of service ecosystem management, aim of this paper is analyze NSF I-CorpsTM case study in order to understand if its methodology (the LeanLaunchPad) and methods (customer discovery journey) can contribute to an innovation-oriented educational entrepreneurship, taking as reference the suggestions of the "Viable System Approach" (Gummesson, E. 2006), typical of the marketing management literature. The methodology provides a longitudinal analysis of the NSF I-Corps achievements in quantitative terms (n° of startups successfully funded, individuals trained), and the results show that its teaching methods allowed a successful go-to-market of many startups in the STEM field – a number higher than those reached through other US governmental grants programs.