Los Angeles Regional I-Corps Node: Promoting Innovation and Entrepreneurship in the Southern California Region

洛杉矶是美国第二大经济体，以医疗保健、航空航天和国防工业为支柱。它现在也是快速发展的硅滩技术走廊的所在地，在软件、数字和互动媒体、可再生能源和其他众多领域催生了令人兴奋的新创业公司。洛杉矶地区是美国毕业工程师人数最多的地区之一，拥有庞大的制造业基地，为其创新和创业生态系统的重大转型做好了理想的准备。洛杉矶地区I-Corps节点将通过帮助提高利用该地区产品和服务的潜力，帮助加速这一转变。由南加州大学牵头的“节点”项目由南加州大学、加州大学洛杉矶分校和加州理工学院组成，将通过以下方式改善该地区的生态系统：示范如何利用区域优势支持全国商业化；研究团队和客户网络的形成；调整技术和组织成熟度路径；并确定机构支持机制，以加速团队合并、技术到产品的转换和客户获取。该节点将有助于NSF的使命，使STEM学生、技术专业人员、研究人员和企业家能够积极有效地将创新理念转化为大规模商业化。将举办年度I-Corps培训课程，结合伙伴机构的力量，提供新的区域创业机会，并为I-Corps国家创新网络（NIN）提供新的资源。两项工作将特别侧重于将精益创业模式扩展到洛杉矶地区的成熟行业。第一个将侧重于医疗工程，包括一个“移动演示日”，将向研究人员介绍工程和医学的融合、监管障碍、保险策略、医疗行业分布模式和相关问题。第二个将侧重于航空航天和国防；为该领域的技术人员提供无与伦比的洞察力、指导和机会，以及可用于开发与大型系统集成商结盟的策略。Node将为商业化过程和成果提供一个充满活力的研究中心。它将考察创始团队的组建、工程人才与商业技能的结合，以及培养与行业现有企业关系的客户和联盟发展。研究还将侧重于评估和提高技术成熟度评估中的企业家技能，了解工业采用所需的技术成熟度水平，并确定加速商业化的体制支持机制。技术和组织成熟度沿着独立且通常不同步的时间线进行的假设将被测试，以更好地理解它们的相互作用并确定将增加成功的因素。来自投资者、客户和顾问的数据将有助于了解每个企业家的利益相关者网络，并认识到融资活动和持续时间之间的相关性。同样，Node将研究首次销售的持续时间、获得政府拨款和其他现金产生的里程碑。这些因素将与技术发展里程碑联系在一起，以确定关系和关键驱动因素，例如潜在客户和投资者在加速公司运营现金流方面的重要性（即通过销售，而不是融资）。短期结果将有助于理解各种角色和依赖关系的相对重要性。长期成果将有助于改善区域工作队的业绩。Node的网站将向NIN提供视频、幻灯片和相关材料，其中包括“需求和交易”部分，在该部分将宣传寻求专业指导的当地交易。该网站还将发布经过审查的导师的简历和联系信息，这些导师可以帮助该国其他地区的公司。

The Los Angeles economy, the nation's second largest, is anchored by the health care, aerospace and defense industries. It is now also home to the rapidly growing Silicon Beach technology corridor, which spawns exciting new startups in software, digital and interactive media, renewable energy and a plethora of others. With one of the largest populations of graduating engineers in the country and a large manufacturing base, the Los Angeles region is ideally poised for a substantial transformation of its innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystem. The Los Angeles Regional I-Corps Node will help accelerate this transformation, by helping to increase the potential for leveraging the region's products and services. The University of Southern California led Node, consisting of a partnership between the University of Southern California, the University of California Los Angeles, and the California Institute of Technology, will improve the region's ecosystem by: modeling how to leverage regional strengths to support commercialization nationally; studying team and customer-network formation; aligning technology and organizational maturity paths; and determining institutional support mechanisms to accelerate team coalescence, technology-to-product transformation, and customer acquisition. The Node will contribute to the NSF's mission of empowering STEM students, technical professionals, researchers and entrepreneurs to actively and effectively translate innovative ideas into large-scale commercialization. Annual I-Corps training sessions will be created that combine the strength of the partner institutions to offer new regional entrepreneurial opportunities and contribute novel resources to the I-Corps National Innovation Network (NIN). Two efforts will specifically focus on extending the Lean Start-up model to established industries in the Los Angeles region. The first will focus on health-care engineering, including a 'Mobile Demo Day' that will educate researchers on the convergence of engineering and medicine, regulatory hurdles, insurance strategies, medical industry distribution models, and related issues. The second will focus on aerospace and defense; offering unparalleled access to insight, mentoring, and opportunities to technologists in this area, along with strategies that can be used to develop an alignment with large-scale system integrators. The Node will provide a vibrant research center for commercialization processes and outcomes. It will examine founding team formation, the coalescence of engineering talent with business skills, and customer and alliance development that cultivates relationships with industry incumbents. The research will also focus on evaluating and improving entrepreneurial skills in technology maturity assessments, understanding the level of technology maturity required for industrial adoption, and identifying institutional support mechanism for accelerating commercialization. The hypothesis that technology and organizational maturity proceed along independent and often unsynchronized timelines will be tested to better understand their interactions and identify factors that will increase success. Data from investors, customers, and advisors will help provide an awareness of each entrepreneur's stakeholder network and recognize correlations involved with both the activity and duration of fundraising. In a similar vein, the Node will study the duration to first sales, acquisition of government grants, and other milestones in cash generation. These factors will be tied to technology development milestones in order to identify relationships and key drivers, such as the importance of prospective customers and investors in accelerating operational cash flow to the company (i.e., through sales, rather than financing). Short-term outcomes will contribute to an understanding of the relative importance of various roles and dependencies. Longer-term outcomes will contribute to an improvement in the performance of regional teams. The Node's website will contribute videos, slide decks, and related materials to the NIN, including a 'Needs and Deals' section where local deals that seek specialized guidance will be advertised. The website will also post bios and contact information for vetted mentors who can assist companies in other regions of the country.