Innovations are springing from labs and classrooms universitywide. To help launch these big ideas, NUtech Ventures hosts introductory entrepreneurship workshops. NUtech, Nebraska\u2019s technology commercialization affiliate, and its partners provide training and mentorship to help turn innovations and business ideas into marketable products and services.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The program, Nebraska Introduction to Customer Discovery, is modeled after the National Science Foundation\u2019s Innovation Corps, which seeks to advance technological commercialization and entrepreneurship.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cA lot of university technology, once it\u2019s developed and protected, needs additional validation and de-risking,\u201d said Brad Roth, NUtech\u2019s executive director. \u201cWe see N-ICD as one of the first steps that can provide support to aspiring university inventors and entrepreneurs.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
During intense workshops, faculty, students and staff explore their innovation\u2019s potential market and think deeply about prospective customers. Interviewing stakeholders is key to validating the real-world viability of their ideas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Participants measure success in different ways, from testing ideas to learning new skills and even thinking differently about their long-term research, said Joy Eakin, who coordinates N-ICD.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The program, in its third year, has worked with over 60 teams from all four University of Nebraska campuses in a variety of fields. To date, three teams have been accepted into NSF\u2019s I-Corps program.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One of those teams, led by George Holmes Professor of Agronomy Daniel Schachtman, is developing, with University of Missouri colleagues, environmentally friendly biofungicides to attack fungi that reduce crop yields. N-ICD helped the team identify the leafy greens industry, which is dealing with a vexing soil fungus, as an initial target market.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Schachtman said the program provides valuable access to additional resources, such as investors, I-Corps and Small Business Innovation Research grants.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI\u2019m really enthusiastic about the program,\u201d he said. \u201cThe support and network I\u2019ve gained has really blown me away. I\u2019ve made many contacts, and I know how to move forward. We have a pretty clear plan for the next steps to start this business.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
NUtech\u2019s N-ICD partners include the Nebraska Business Development Center, UNL Center for Entrepreneurship, The Combine Incubator, National Strategic Research Institute and Invest Nebraska.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Innovations are springing from labs and classrooms universitywide. To help launch these big ideas, NUtech Ventures hosts introductory entrepreneurship workshops. NUtech, Nebraska\u2019s technology commercialization affiliate, and its partners provide training and mentorship to help turn innovations and business ideas into marketable products and services. The program, Nebraska Introduction to Customer Discovery, is modeled after the… Continue reading Turning Innovators into Entrepreneurs<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":403,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[104],"tags":[61,62,59,60,57,63],"class_list":["post-79","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-economic-development","tag-daniel-schachtman","tag-economic-development","tag-nebraska-introduction-to-customer-discovery","tag-nsf-innovation-corps","tag-nutech-ventures","tag-technology-commercialization-and-entrepreneurship","entry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/research.unl.edu\/annualreport\/2021\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/research.unl.edu\/annualreport\/2021\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/research.unl.edu\/annualreport\/2021\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/research.unl.edu\/annualreport\/2021\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/research.unl.edu\/annualreport\/2021\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=79"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/research.unl.edu\/annualreport\/2021\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":251,"href":"https:\/\/research.unl.edu\/annualreport\/2021\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79\/revisions\/251"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/research.unl.edu\/annualreport\/2021\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/403"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/research.unl.edu\/annualreport\/2021\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=79"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/research.unl.edu\/annualreport\/2021\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=79"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/research.unl.edu\/annualreport\/2021\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=79"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}