I-Corps: Continuation and Expansion of Training and Evaluation Support

I-Corps项目旨在通过促进实验室技术的转化和商业化，增加国家科学基金会研究资金和其他研究资金的经济和社会影响。此外，I-Corps计划旨在开始为科学家和工程师提供技能和经验，为技术商业化开发经济上可扩展的商业模式。项目参与者专注于学习和使用一个结构化的过程，使他们能够从用户和潜在客户那里收集输入，以评估和定义从基础研究到具有商业潜力和社会效益的应用的转化路径。大约50%的I-Corps团队继续成立公司，在广泛的领域开展业务，包括卫生、能源、材料、农业和信息技术。这个结构化的、可重复的项目吸引了全国社区的机构和教师来提供培训，从而产生经济效益。通过拟议的工作，VentureWell将支持培训2700多名I-Corps参与者。拟议的努力还将产生额外的I-Corps教员，以增加教师队伍的多样性，加强项目教学方法，并推进系统的数据收集和跟踪立即参与项目的团队。2011年，美国国家科学基金会建立了I-Corps创业培训项目，培训美国国家科学基金会资助的研究人员和其他研究人员如何评估他们在科学和工程领域的科学研究的商业潜力。VentureWell系统、及时地对项目成果进行评估和跟踪项目影响，对于大规模实施一致、有效、高保真的项目以及衡量长期项目结果至关重要。这项工作的核心智力价值在于，随着时间的推移，它提供了对项目影响的洞察——包括经济成果、参与者的职业和研究成果。为了获得这一见解，VentureWell评估每个队列的教学交付，管理纵向结果调查，并独立跟踪风险结果以验证项目影响数据。有效地跟踪结果并为基于技术的企业的发展提供见解的流程和数据系统也是这项工作的产物。通过从2024财年开始到2026财年结束的拟议工作，VentureWell将支持国家I-Corps计划和胜率训练营的虚拟培训，同时促进教学学习的管理和传播，以促进国家I-Corps教员的进一步发展。VentureWell将继续促进国家创新网络（NIN）内的工作，传播有效的课程实践、成果和影响，使NIN能够有效地采用和制度化这些方法。这种支持将进一步推动国家科学基金会的目标，即推动I-Corps成为一个基础企业家培训项目，以接触全国各地的创新者。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The I-Corps program aims to increase the economic and societal impact of NSF research funding and other research funding by facilitating translation of technologies from the laboratory and enabling commercialization. In addition, the I-Corps Program is designed to begin to equip scientists and engineers with skills and experience in developing economically scalable business models for technology commercialization. Program participants focus on learning and using a structured process that enables them to gather input from users and potential customers to evaluate and define a translational path from fundamental research into applications that have commercial potential and societal benefit. Approximately 50% of I-Corps teams go on to form companies operating in a broad range of sectors including health, energy, materials, agriculture, and information technology. This structured, repeatable program engages a national community of institutions and faculty to deliver training that results in economic outcomes. Through the proposed work, VentureWell will support the training of more than 2700 additional individual I-Corps participants. The proposed effort also will generate additional I-Corps instructors to increase the diversity of the faculty pool, enhance the program pedagogy, and advance the systematic data collection and tracking of teams immediately participating in the program.NSF established the I-Corps entrepreneurial training program in 2011 to train NSF-funded and other researchers how to evaluate the commercial potential of their scientific research in science and engineering. VentureWell's evaluation of program outcomes and tracking of program impact in a systematic, timely way has been critical to the operation of a consistent, effective, high-fidelity program at scale, and to the measurement of long-term program results. The core intellectual merit of this work is the insight provided into the program's impact—both economic outcomes and participants' career and research outcomes—over time. To gain this insight, VentureWell evaluates the instructional delivery of each cohort, administers a longitudinal outcomes survey, and tracks venture outcomes independently to verify program impact data. The processes and data systems that efficiently track outcomes and provide insights into the development of technology-based ventures are a product of this work as well. Through the work proposed starting in FY 2024 and ending in FY 2026, VentureWell will support the virtual training of the National I-Corps Program and the Beat-the-Odds Boot Camp while facilitating the curation and dissemination of the pedagogical learnings to enable further development of the National I-Corps instructors. VentureWell will continue to facilitate work within the National Innovation Network (NIN) to disseminate effective course practices, outcomes, and impact enabling the NIN to effectively adopt and institutionalize these approaches. This support will further NSF's goal of advancing I-Corps as a foundational entrepreneur training program to reach innovators across the country.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.