Texas A&M I-Corps Hub is funded by the National Science Foundation and serves faculty, researchers, and students across the Texas A&M System. Our HUB supports deep-tech innovators across our research enterprise and provides real world training on how to incorporate innovations developed in research labs into commercially viable companies to solve societal problems. The program curriculum is based on the Lean Startup framework, through which researchers can better understand the market potential of an innovation.
Texas A&M University has been associated with the NSF I-Corps program since 2012 as an I-Corps Node, Site and presently from 2023 as a founding member of the NSF I-Corps Hub: Southwest, a member of the National Innovation Network.
As a faculty or student researcher, how do you bridge the gap between the university research lab and the marketplace? It's no easy task to advance your work to the point that businesses or government agencies recognize its commercial potential. It requires entrepreneurial skills to identify market opportunities for the discoveries emerging from your research. These entrepreneurial skills, and more, can be gained through our real-world, hands-on, immersive NSF Innovation Corps program.
We offer three routes to prepare for applying to the National NSF I-Corps program.
Program Overview
Preparing doers and thinkers for next-level innovations
LineageLaunch, a three-week program, assists teams with their national application preparation to ensure they are set up for success at the national level. The program is open to researchers and entrepreneurs who have been accepted into a national program through previous NSF research lineage. The NSF lineage must be within the last five years. Examples of previous acceptance could be CAREER award or PFI.
Participating teams will conduct 10+ interviews, meet with an I-Corps instructor for one-on-one office hours, and attend online sessions to develop a customer ecosystem diagram, a list of customer contacts, and a strong understanding of the expectations of the national program.
Team Requirements
Program Expectations
Teams are required to participate in all interviews, office hours and online sessions and develop a customer ecosystem diagram, a list of customer contacts and a strong understanding of the expectation of the national program by the end of the program.
Program Overview
A learn-by-doing startup bootcamp for doers and thinkers
IdeaLaunch, a three-week program, provides an introductory foundation for participants to explore the viability of business ideas. The idea-stage program is open to all entrepreneurial minds - researchers, engineers, scientists, artists, musicians, and business and creative minds - who are ready to solve problems and turn their ideas into potential businesses.
The program is intentionally oriented to simulate the time- and cash-constrained environments in which startups operate, with instructors who will push, challenge and question your business idea to provide direct, open and constructive feedback. Teams will conduct customer discovery interviews to gain real world insight into their customer bases and learn how to adjust their proposed business models based on market needs.
Team Requirements
Program Expectations
Teams are required to participate in all sessions and conduct minimum of 30 customer discovery interviews by the closing workshop.
The U.S. National Science Foundation’s Innovation Corps (I-Corps™) program is an immersive, entrepreneurial training program that facilitates the transformation of invention to impact. This seven-week experiential training program, led by seasoned entrepreneurs, prepares scientists and engineers to extend their focus beyond the university laboratory — accelerating the economic and societal benefits of NSF-funded and other basic research projects that are ready to move toward commercialization.
By leading you through the customer discovery process you will learn how to create a business strategy. The assumption/hypothesis-testing, customer-focused discovery process will help you gather important insights to maximize the impact of your innovation.
More about NSF I-Corps Teams ApplicantsThe most significant impacts from my team’s participation in the NSF I-Corps program came from the experiences of being encouraged to investigate broad commercial outlets for our technology, to engage in customer discovery interviews throughout broad sectors, and to struggle through the development of a business model canvas as a living strategic plan. At the end of I-Corps, we were a ‘no-go’, however, we have since launched a couple of ventures.
Southwest I-Corps offers programs to engage your team in the customer discovery process, establish product-market fit, validate your business model, and improve your odds for commercial success.
