Nice story from New Mexico State University highlighting its participation in the NSF Innovation Corps — “Researcher teams with student” reads the headline.
The story highlights the value of the NSF I Corps and lean startup methodology as the firm pivoted from its initial focus on bullet resistant backpacks to its current focus on bringing improvement to the helmet industry. Its interesting to note that it was a university resource, Studio G, that appears to have coordinated and supported this team from NMSU. From the story by Vicki L. Nisbitt:
NMSU chemical engineering graduate student Brian Patterson is working with the technology through Studio G, and pursued the I-Corps funding opportunity with Xu and Studio G Director Kramer Winingham. The goal is to commercialize the lightweight and affordable material.
“Business ideas that are presented through this program have a direct impact on research and development and are closely related,” Patterson said. “Therefore, it’s important to understand the business components as they dictate the R&D direction.”
The team interviewed 100 potential customers to gain a better understanding of the market for their technology.
The I-Corps program and activities prepare scientists and engineers to extend their focus beyond the laboratory and broaden the impact of their projects. One of the I-Corps objectives is to have an entrepreneurial student who shows potential in business and technology handle the commercialization…
Left to right: Mechanical engineering Research Associate Professor Roy L. Xu, chemical engineering graduate student Brian Patterson, and Studio G Director Dr. Kramer Winingham (Photo by Darren Phillips)
The DTMI material also has applications in football helmets and could help reduce concussion risk for players. The helmet shell materials with DTMI designs could increase impact-energy absorption at least 130 percent, compared to the current shell materials.
“A key finding during the I-Corps program was the opportunity for an advanced helmet shell design that could reduce concussions and adapt to other helmet technologies,” Winingham said. “This appears to be the best initial application for Dr. Xu’s technology.”
The university claims the group is responsible for funneling about $2 million in school funds to a company owned by microchip professor Joy Laskar, 47, and research engineer Stephane Pinel, 36. Also charged is office administrator Chris Evans, 56.
The men reported to the Fulton County Jail after arrest warrants were obtained by the GBI in connection with an ongoing investigation into misappropriation of funds and resources from the school’s Georgia Electronic Design Center, GBI spokesman John Bankhead said Saturday.
As part of the investigation, the GBI executed search warrants on May 17 that included nine locations on campus as well as two residences, said Bankhead.
Laskar’s attorney Craig Gillen said his client and Georgia Tech were business partners. He said the school took advantage of Laskar’s brilliance in the field of microchips.
“He and his team had founded a company that had perfected a chip that might well be worth millions and millions of dollars. Now, Georgia Tech had a piece of that… Apparently they wanted more,” Gillen told Channel 2’s Richard Belcher.
The Bayh-Dole Act has led to some strange outcomes in various places. BTW, Gatorade’s inventors at University of Florida had major legal issues in the past. Though those were fights over profits.
As the lawyer for the professor points out, the chip ‘might’ be worth ‘millions and millions’ — meaning the fight here is over funds for growth, not from profits. Gatorade was worth hundreds of millions when the legal battles ramped up.
Again, thought I’d share some of the darker side of campus entrepreneurship in this entry.
Most academic administrators and researchers who look into entrepreneurship on campus focus on technology transfer — namely, how scientific advances made at the university can be commercialized to a) aid economic growth, thus letting society/the economy benefit from knowledge accumulation and b) provide $$ for the school and the professors.
Here is an update from the National Dialogue on Entrepreneurship on tech transfer and a new tech transfer initiative from the Kauffman Foundation.
Inspired by positive results from a joint study with the Max Planck Institute of Economics, the Kauffman Foundation has formed a network that will bring proof of concept centers together to move university innovations into the marketplace. These centers provide seed funding to university-based early stage research as well as a host of advisory services and educational initiatives to assist students and faculty with market research, mentoring, development and testing of innovations, preparation of business plans and connections to the commercial market.
Click here to read more from Kauffman, download the report, and watch a video on the initiative.
I still believe the focus on tech and tech transfer is a bit misguided. It creates bureaucracies — TTO offices and centers — to do the job of entrepreneurs. I don’t know if this will lead to success.
Campus Entrepreneurship 