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In 2012, the National Science Foundation (NSF) took ambitious steps to revisit how they invest in academic innovation and entrepreneurship. Rather than increasing financial investments in technology development, it created NSF I-Corps™, an innovation education program and nationwide innovation network for NSF-funded faculty and trainees. Since its launch, NSF I-Corps has trained over 3,000 researchers and has been adopted by nine federal agencies. This paper provides a brief history of government investment in academic innovation, including the conceptualization of the I-Corps program, as well as its goals, growth, and influence on other agencies. The primary data for the paper includes interviews from 13 key individuals involved in the launch of the program and publicly available program data. We conclude with a discussion of challenges and opportunities as I-Corps-related programs look to scale and sustain their efforts going forward. This paper offers government, university administrators, and faculty insight into alternative methods of promoting academic innovation and explores future research areas for entrepreneurial ecosystems and education.
Key words: National Science Foundation; I-Corps; Innovation, Entrepreneurship; Academic innovation
INTRODUCTION
Innovation is viewed as the economic driver of today's knowledge economy. The U.S. federal government has consistently supported innovation through policies, regulations, and funding (1). For years, funding has been viewed as the major factor for the U.S.'s innovation success (2), contributing 20% to 25% of early-stage investments (3). Government investments in early-stage technology development reduces technical uncertainty by bridging the "valley of death" finance gap (4). The phrase "valley of death" is often used to describe the early-stage capital gap between federally funded research and late-stage venture capital financing (2).
In 2012, the National Science Foundation (NSF) launched I-Corps™, drastically changing their approach to stimulating research translation by redefining the role of government funding. Unlike traditional early-stage product development government grants, I-Corps was created to bring teams of NSF-funded researchers and industry experts together to enroll in an entrepreneurship and innovation course and complete an opportunity recognition exercise while developing a potential business model. For the first time, NSF was directing funds towards developing the individual innovator, as opposed to the technology itself. With I-Corps, NSF began investing in faculty human capital development and facilitating the creation of closer university-industry ties (5).
The purpose of this article is...