Universities are important hubs and drivers of innovation and technology, but many student 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 Innovation Corps (I-Corps), which uses the Lean LaunchPad methodology and emphasizes the customer discovery journey, represents a shift in this sense, since, for the first time, a governmental institution (the US National Science Foundation [NSF]) invests in the student innovators’ education and networking outside of academia. Therefore, aim of this paper is review and analyze the period 2011-2018 of the NSF ICorps as a case study, together with one of its main regional nodes of development (New York City Regional Innovation Node), in order to understand if its methodology can contribute to an innovation-oriented educational entrepreneurship paradigm. The applied 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.
A retrospective (2011-2018) of the I-Corps Entrepreneurship Education program and of the New York City Regional Innovation Node / Caratu', Myriam; Blaho, John. - (2022), pp. 1-41. (Intervento presentato al convegno EURAM Conference2022, “Leading Digital Transformation”; tenutosi a Winthertur/Zurich, Switzerland).
A retrospective (2011-2018) of the I-Corps Entrepreneurship Education program and of the New York City Regional Innovation Node
Myriam Caratu'
Primo
;
2022
Abstract
Universities are important hubs and drivers of innovation and technology, but many student 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 Innovation Corps (I-Corps), which uses the Lean LaunchPad methodology and emphasizes the customer discovery journey, represents a shift in this sense, since, for the first time, a governmental institution (the US National Science Foundation [NSF]) invests in the student innovators’ education and networking outside of academia. Therefore, aim of this paper is review and analyze the period 2011-2018 of the NSF ICorps as a case study, together with one of its main regional nodes of development (New York City Regional Innovation Node), in order to understand if its methodology can contribute to an innovation-oriented educational entrepreneurship paradigm. The applied 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.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
