Silicon Valley was born in an era of applied experimentation driven by scientists and engineers. It wasn't pure research, but rather a culture of taking sufficient risks to get products to market through learning, discovery, iteration and execution. This approach would shape Silicon Valley's entrepreneurial ethos: In startups, failure was treated as experience (until you ran out of money).
The combination of venture capital and technology entrepreneurship is one of the great business inventions of the last 50 years. It provides private funds for untested and unproven technology and entrepreneurs. While most of these investments fail, the returns for the ones that win are so great they make up for the failures. Yet this system isn't perfect. From the point of view of scientists and engineers in a university lab, too often entrepreneurship in all its VC-driven glory - income statements, balance sheets, business plans, revenue models - seems like another planet. There didn't seem to be much in common between the scientific method and starting a company and this has been a barrier to commercializing the best of our science research.
Until today.
To commercialize these university innovations, NSF will be putting the Innovation Corps (I-Corps) teams through a class that teaches scientists and engineers to treat starting a company as another research project that can be solved by an iterative process of hypotheses testing and experimentation. The class will be a version of the Lean LaunchPad class we developed in the Stanford Technology Ventures Program, (the entrepreneurship center at Stanford's School of Engineering).
This is a big deal. Not just for scientists and engineers, not just for every science university in the U.S., but in the way we think about bringing discoveries ripe for innovation out of the university lab. If this program works it will change how we connect basic research to the business world. And it will lead to more startups and job creation.
Introducing the Innovation-Corps?
The NSF Innovation-Corps program (I-Corps) is designed to help bridge the gap between the many scientists and engineers with innovative research and technologies, but little knowledge of the first steps to take in starting a company. I-Corps will help scientists take the first steps from the research lab to commercialization.
At the end of the program each team will understand what it will takes to turn their research into a commercial success. They may decide to license their intellectual property based on their research. Or they may decide to try to get funded as a startup (with strategic partners, investors, or NSF programs for small businesses). At the end of the class there will be a Demo Day when investors get to see the best this country's researchers have to offer.
What Took You So Long??
A first reaction to the NSF I-Corps program might be "You mean we haven't already been doing this?" But on reflection it's clear why. The common wisdom was that for scientists and engineers to succeed in the entrepreneurial world you'd have to teach them all about business. But it's only now that we realize that's wrong. The insight the NSF had is that we just need to teach scientists and engineers to treat business models as another research project that can be solved with learning, discovery and experimentation. And Stanford's Lean LaunchPad class could do just that.
Join the I-Corps?
The National Science Foundation is publishing the application for admission (what they call the "solicitation for proposals") to the program. See the NSF I-Corps web page for details.
The syllabus for NSF I-Corps version of the Lean LaunchPad class can be seen here. Along with a great teaching team at Stanford, world-class VC's who get it and foundation partners, I'm proud to be a part of it. This is a potential game changer for science and innovation in the United States.