innovationycombinator.pngSilicon Valley was born in an era of applied experimentation driven by scientists and engineers. It wasn't pure research, but rather a culture of taking sufficient risks to get products to market through learning, discovery, iteration and execution. This approach would shape Silicon Valley's entrepreneurial ethos: In startups, failure was treated as experience (until you ran out of money).


Yet this system isn't perfect. From the point of view of scientists and engineers in a university lab, too often entrepreneurship in all its VC-driven glory - income statements, balance sheets, business plans, revenue models, 5-year forecasts, etc. - seems like another planet. There didn't seem to be much in common between the Scientific Method and starting a company. And this has been a barrier to commercializing the best of our science research.

Until today.

Today, the National Science Foundation (NSF) - the $6.8-billion U.S. government agency that supports research in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering - is changing the startup landscape for scientists and engineers. The NSF has announced the Innovation Corps - a program to take the most promising research projects in American university laboratories and turn them into startups. It will train them with a process that embraces experimentation, learning, and discovery.







Over a period of six months, each I-Corps team, guided by experienced mentors (entrepreneurs and VC's) will build their product and get out of their labs (and comfort zone) to discover who are their potential customers, and how those customers might best use the new technology/invention. They'll explore the best way to deliver the product to customers, the resources required, as well as competing technologies. They will answer the question, "What value will this innovation add to the marketplace? And they'll do this using the business model / customer development / agile development solution stack.


A first reaction to the NSF I-Corps program might be, "You mean we haven't already been doing this?" But on reflection it's clear why. The common wisdom was that for scientists and engineers to succeed in the entrepreneurial world you'd have to teach them all about business. But it's only now that we realize that's wrong. The insight the NSF had is that we just need to teach scientists and engineers to treat business models as another research project that can be solved with learning, discovery and experimentation.

Along with a great teaching team at Stanford, world-class VC's who get it, and other industry partners, I'm proud to be a part of it. This is a potential game changer for science and innovation in the United States.