A network- based view of the University Technology Transfer: boosting the go-to-market of innovation with the NSF I-Corps
Universities are important hubs and drivers of innovation and
technology, but many inventions remain embryonic in nature: this implies that they
need further development before their commercial value or potential can become
imminent or evident, and one of the reasons why this has happened is a certain
myopia in the governmental funds policies, that fund early stage products’ concept
without focusing of the users’ insights as well as the creation if a stakeholders’
network to make the product more viable to commercialization. The I-Corps, with
the Lean LaunchPad methodology and the customer discovery journey, represents a
shift in this sense, since for the first time a governmental institution (the NSF) invests
in the innovators’ education and networking outside the academia, and no more in
the innovation. Therefore, based on the studies about the implementation of the
network theory in the field of service ecosystem management, aim of this paper is
analyze NSF I-CorpsTM case study in order to understand if its methodology (the
LeanLaunchPad) and methods (customer discovery journey) can contribute to an
innovation-oriented educational entrepreneurship, taking as reference the
suggestions of the "Viable System Approach" (Gummesson, E. 2006), typical of the
marketing management literature. The methodology provides a longitudinal analysis of
the NSF I-Corps achievements in quantitative terms (n° of startups successfully funded,
individuals trained), and the results show that its teaching methods allowed a successful
go-to-market of many startups in the STEM field – a number higher than those reached
through other US governmental grants programs.