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INVESTING IN ACADEMIC TECHNOLOGY INNOVATION 777

with wide geographic reach, and forming companies • Level 1: Provide a cohort of national
within five years of program inception. instructors to teach the I-Corps curriculum
to national and regional cohorts of teams and
Building the National Innovation Network to offer consistent and frequent support for the
The early success of the I-Corps courses led to duration of the program
the creation of the NIN, a network development • Level 2: Develop and leverage tools and
plan to address scale. The NIN was created to offer resources that assist with disseminating the
widespread geographical infrastructure support and I- Corps curriculum, address issues associ-
resources (I-Corps Nodes) and support pipeline ated with accelerating the diffusion/adaptation/
development (I-Corps Sites) for individual teams adoption of effective innovation practices
(I-Corps Teams, described above). Resources are within the national ecosystem, and build
defined as a network of instructors and mentors who entrepreneurial capacity within the node’s
can identify and build needed commercialization environment
tools, maintain a current curriculum, disseminate • Level 3: Pursue long-term R&D projects
knowledge about lessons learned, and carry out that would lead to the publication of insights
research about entrepreneurship and commercial- on the development of innovation ecosystems
ization. Tables 1 and 2 list the active Nodes and Sites resulting from level 1 and 2 activities
as of the date of March 1, 2017. As a collective, the
three programs (I-Corps Teams, Nodes, and Sites) I-Corps Node institutions (Table 1) provide a
are the foundation of NSF’s vision for creating an framework for NIN universities to share cur-
innovation ecosystem for academic institutions. riculum and tools and partner with regional
a) I-Corps Nodes institutions to deliver various I-Corps short
University of Michigan and the Georgia Institute courses ranging from one day to one semester
of Technology became the first two I-Corps nodes (16 weeks). Shared resources have included an
in 2012. They were expected to be outward and abridged short course curriculum used as a primer
inward facing, working nationally and regionally, for preparing teams for the national I-Corps Teams
as articulated in the first I-Corps Node solicitation: program and videos and books that explain the
core concepts of the I-Corps curriculum (23,24).
The National Science Foundation plans to build
upon the I-Corps program and establish a b) I-Corps Sites
National Innovation Network comprised of The I-Corps Sites program launched in 2013 to
I-Corps Regional Nodes that will support the develop a pipeline of teams eligible for the national
needs for innovation research and education. I-Corps program and contribute to the larger
NSF is seeking to build a network of regional national network of mentors, researchers, entre-
nodes that will work cooperatively to establish, preneurs, and investors (Solicitation NSF 12-604).
utilize and sustain a national innovation eco- Academic institutions with existing innovation or
system that further enhances the development entrepreneurial units are eligible to apply for an
of technologies, products and processes that I-Corps Sites grant to seed student and/or fac-
benefit society. ulty commercially viable projects with modest
amounts of funding ($1,000 to $3,000).
The interconnected nodes of this network may The Sites program exposes local academic
be diverse in research areas, resources, tools, teams to I-Corps core concepts, identifies can-
programs, capabilities, and in geographic loca- didate teams for the national I-Corps program,
tions — while the network will have the flexibility connects teams to investors and industry partners,
to grow or reconfigure as needs arise (22). and provides space to sponsor innovation. Given
Two solicitations followed, formalizing the the growth of new innovation centers nationwide,
I-Corps Node call for proposals to include three the number of institutions likely to pursue an
levels of activity (NSF 12-586, NSF 16-539): I-Corps Sites award is only consistently increasing.