The National Science Foundation wants to take researchers’ big ideas from the laboratory to marketplace through a new program called Innovation Corps.
The public-private partnership between NSF, the Kauffman Foundation, and the Deshpande Foundation will provide $50,000 grants to help scientists turn research into viable products, says NSF program manager Errol Arkilic. The grants are limited to researchers who have already been funded by NSF. They’re intended to support the projects for up to six months while the teams research how their technology could benefit society.
The program will use the curriculum of Stanford University’s Lean Launchpad, a class developed by serial tech entrepreneur Steve Blank to teach entrepreneurship to engineers, scientists, and other professionals. Blank will also be an I-Corps instructor. He says the main goal of his course is to get students out of their labs to see if what they have to offer is what a customer really needs.
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