Program description
The Innovation Corps (I-Corps™) program, funded by the National Science Foundation, aims to accelerate academic research projects that are ready to move toward commercialization. Through training and mentorship, program participants learn about the commercialization process and test the value of their business idea by talking to potential customers.
This program is excellent preparation for anyone who wants to participate in business plan competitions, seek gap funding, or apply for further federal funding (National I-Corps Teams grant, SBIR/STTR grants, etc.). See below to learn more about the experience of past participants and to view lists of past winning teams.
What they’re saying
“The I-Corps program is fantastic because you get to work with some talented mentors and staff who walk you through the process of what they call customer discovery. And this involves figuring out who needs your innovation and how to package it in a way that it will be useful for them. So that was incredibly useful.”
- Cecilia Aragon, Professor, UW Human Centered Design & Engineering
“I-Corps is one of the best preparation and pathfinding programs anywhere. The work that CoMotion takes on to prepare researchers to present their work in a business context is critical and peerless.”
- Forrest Fabian Jesse, UW PhD
“Our experience in the I-Corps program crystallized for us that there is a market for our technology and that there are real-world problems that we can use our technology to solve. That was a big moment for us.”
- David Sparkman-Yager, Co-founder & CTO, Wayfinder Biosciences