(2011-07-28) Blank Innovation Corps

The NSF is going to run contests, awarding 100 science and engineering projects/year $10k plus membership in a class based on Steve Blank's Lean Launchpad course (2011-03-09-Blank[[Lean LaunchpadCourse]]). 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. I Commented.

Dec20'2011 update: 63 scientists and engineers in 21 teams made 2,000 customer calls in 8 weeks, turning laboratory ideas into formidable startups. 19 of the 21 teams are moving forward in commercializing their technology... Each of the teams selected by the NSF had a Principal Investigator – a research scientist who was a University professor; an Entrepreneurial Lead – a graduate student working in the Investigator’s lab; and a mentor from their local area who had business and/or domain expertise. And they were hard at work at some real science.