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

该项目由密歇根大学i-Corps Node进行，它是NSF i-Corps的创始节点之一，将把创始节点扩展为一个名为I-Corps Midwest的综合性区域节点。I-Corps Midwest Node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分校和普渡大学作为合作机构。该节点非常适合为中西部创业生态系统服务，方法是弥合农村通信差距，这些差距通常会导致围绕研究发明的不知情的商业机会，难以留住和接触具有足够广度的特定和相关专业知识的人才，并在i-Corps项目中灌输客户发现记忆，允许创业研究人员利用以前i-Corps团队的学习。该项目将创建机制，通过建立现有的合作伙伴大学合作来克服生态系统密度低的后果，并创建一个积极而紧密的网络，利用他们的集体商业化管道、以前的经验和联系。该节点将形成对教职员工和学生在参与i-Corps计划时的个人动机和经历的更深层次的理解。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。该节点将创建对网络活动的测量，其结果将提供有关哪些方法有效以及应向其他区域组和国家传播的信息。该项目建立在NSF过去四年工作的基础上，旨在建立至关重要的合作，使那些不位于企业家密集地区的机构能够接触到个人，并为在国家和国际层面上的竞争做好准备。

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.