I-Corps Node: Activating the Midwest I-Corps Network

密歇根大学I-Corps节点是NSF I-Corps的创始节点之一，该项目将把创始节点扩展为一个名为I-Corps中西部的综合性区域节点。I-Corps中西部节点汇集了密歇根大学（UM）作为牵头机构，伊利诺伊大学厄巴纳香槟和普渡大学作为合作机构。这个节点是唯一适合服务于中西部创业生态系统，通过弥合农村通信差距，通常导致一个不知情的商业机会，围绕研究发明，难以留住和访问人才与足够的具体和相关的专业知识的广度，并在I-Corps项目中灌输客户发现记忆，使创业研究人员能够利用以前的I-Corps项目中的学习，该项目将建立机制，通过建立现有的合作伙伴大学合作来克服低生态系统密度的后果，并建立一个积极而有凝聚力的网络，利用他们的集体商业化管道，以前的经验和联系。该节点将形成个人的动机和教师和学生的经验，因为他们在I-Corps程序参与更深入的了解。这些知识将有助于继续推动这些机构的文化变革，并创造将研究想法推向市场所需的创新人力资本。该节点将建立网络活动的衡量标准，其结果将提供信息，说明哪些方法是有效的，应向其他区域集群和国家推广。该项目建立在NSF过去四年的工作基础上，旨在建立合作关系，这对于那些不位于人口密集地区的机构来说至关重要，可以帮助个人在国家和国际层面上进行竞争。

This project by the University of Michigan I-Corps Node, one of the founding NSF I-Corps nodes, will expand the founding Node into a comprehensive regional node called I-Corps Midwest. I-Corps Midwest Node brings together the University of Michigan (UM) as the lead institution, and the University of Illinois Urbana Champagne, and Purdue University as partner institutions. This Node is uniquely suited to serve the Midwest entrepreneurial ecosystem by bridging rural communication gaps that typically lead to an uninformed commercial opportunity around research inventions, difficulty in retaining and accessing talent with sufficient breadth of specific and relevant expertise, and instilling customer discovery memory across I-Corps programs allowing entrepreneurial researchers to leverage learning from previous I-Corps teams.This project will create mechanisms to overcome the consequences of low ecosystem density by building on the existing partner university collaborations and create an active and cohesive network that leverages their collective commercialization pipeline, previous experiences, and connections. The Node will form a deeper understanding of the individual motivations and experiences of the faculty and students as they participate in I-Corps programs. This knowledge will help to continue driving culture change at these institutions and create the innovation human capital needed to move research ideas forward into the marketplace. The Node will create measurements of network activity and the resulting outcomes will provide information on which methodologies are effective and should be propagated to other regional clusters and the nation. This project builds on the previous four years of work by NSF to create collaborations that are critically important for institutions that are not located in entrepreneurially dense areas to reach and prepare individuals to compete on a national and international level.