I-Corps is a National Science Foundation (NSF) Initiative to increase the economic impact of research and social entrepreneurship.
This course engages participants to explore their ideas and research deeply by talking to potential customers, partners and competitors and encountering the challenges and uncertainty of creating successful innovations. This workshop provides tools and guidance to help validate (or invalidate) a business model for maximizing the number people your research or concept impacts. Validated opportunities can be then be pursued by you or by teams from UMB or from the region and could be a startup, a large company, a non-profit or foundation, government, etc. This isn't a workshop about starting a company. Instead, it's structured coaching to help you better identify and validate opportunities where innovative research can make a scalable and sustainable impact.
The first cohort of I-Corps was piloted at UMB and lead by Dr. Dean Chang, Associate Vice President of Innovation and Entrepreneurship at the University of Maryland, College Park. The program is designed to be as convenient as possible for teams to attend. The kick-off was a half-day in-person event, followed by 10-20 customer discovery interviews and two 30-minute check-in meetings/calls scheduled at a times that are convenient for the participant. I-Corps is a campus-wide program jointly offered by the Graduate School and the Office of Research and Development.
Date and Location: Wednesday, October 3, 2018 9 a.m. - 3 p.m.