| NSF Org: |
TI Translational Impacts |
| Recipient: |
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| Initial Amendment Date: | August 21, 2014 |
| Latest Amendment Date: | September 9, 2020 |
| Award Number: | 1444080 |
| Award Instrument: | Continuing Grant |
| Program Manager: |
Ruth Shuman
rshuman@nsf.gov (703)292-2160 TI Translational Impacts TIP Directorate for Technology, Innovation, and Partnerships |
| Start Date: | November 1, 2014 |
| End Date: | October 31, 2021 (Estimated) |
| Total Intended Award Amount: | $3,573,389.00 |
| Total Awarded Amount to Date: | $4,315,244.00 |
| Funds Obligated to Date: |
FY 2015 = $2,409,730.00 FY 2016 = $325,646.00 FY 2017 = $400,000.00 |
| History of Investigator: |
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| Recipient Sponsored Research Office: |
3720 S FLOWER ST FL 3 LOS ANGELES CA US 90033 (213)740-7762 |
| Sponsor Congressional District: |
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| Primary Place of Performance: |
3720 S. Flower St. Los Angeles CA US 90007-4318 |
| Primary Place of
Performance Congressional District: |
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| Unique Entity Identifier (UEI): |
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| Parent UEI: |
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| NSF Program(s): |
I-Corps-Nodes, SBIR Outreach & Tech. Assist |
| Primary Program Source: |
01001516DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT 01001617DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT 01001718DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT |
| Program Reference Code(s): |
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| Program Element Code(s): |
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| Award Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Fund Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Assistance Listing Number(s): | 47.084 |
ABSTRACT
The Los Angeles economy, the nation's second largest, is anchored by the health care, aerospace and defense industries. It is now also home to the rapidly growing Silicon Beach technology corridor, which spawns exciting new startups in software, digital and interactive media, renewable energy and a plethora of others. With one of the largest populations of graduating engineers in the country and a large manufacturing base, the Los Angeles region is ideally poised for a substantial transformation of its innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystem. The Los Angeles Regional I-Corps Node will help accelerate this transformation, by helping to increase the potential for leveraging the region's products and services. The University of Southern California led Node, consisting of a partnership between the University of Southern California, the University of California Los Angeles, and the California Institute of Technology, will improve the region's ecosystem by: modeling how to leverage regional strengths to support commercialization nationally; studying team and customer-network formation; aligning technology and organizational maturity paths; and determining institutional support mechanisms to accelerate team coalescence, technology-to-product transformation, and customer acquisition. The Node will contribute to the NSF's mission of empowering STEM students, technical professionals, researchers and entrepreneurs to actively and effectively translate innovative ideas into large-scale commercialization. Annual I-Corps training sessions will be created that combine the strength of the partner institutions to offer new regional entrepreneurial opportunities and contribute novel resources to the I-Corps National Innovation Network (NIN). Two efforts will specifically focus on extending the Lean Start-up model to established industries in the Los Angeles region. The first will focus on health-care engineering, including a 'Mobile Demo Day' that will educate researchers on the convergence of engineering and medicine, regulatory hurdles, insurance strategies, medical industry distribution models, and related issues. The second will focus on aerospace and defense; offering unparalleled access to insight, mentoring, and opportunities to technologists in this area, along with strategies that can be used to develop an alignment with large-scale system integrators.
The Node will provide a vibrant research center for commercialization processes and outcomes. It will examine founding team formation, the coalescence of engineering talent with business skills, and customer and alliance development that cultivates relationships with industry incumbents. The research will also focus on evaluating and improving entrepreneurial skills in technology maturity assessments, understanding the level of technology maturity required for industrial adoption, and identifying institutional support mechanism for accelerating commercialization. The hypothesis that technology and organizational maturity proceed along independent and often unsynchronized timelines will be tested to better understand their interactions and identify factors that will increase success. Data from investors, customers, and advisors will help provide an awareness of each entrepreneur's stakeholder network and recognize correlations involved with both the activity and duration of fundraising. In a similar vein, the Node will study the duration to first sales, acquisition of government grants, and other milestones in cash generation. These factors will be tied to technology development milestones in order to identify relationships and key drivers, such as the importance of prospective customers and investors in accelerating operational cash flow to the company (i.e., through sales, rather than financing). Short-term outcomes will contribute to an understanding of the relative importance of various roles and dependencies. Longer-term outcomes will contribute to an improvement in the performance of regional teams. The Node's website will contribute videos, slide decks, and related materials to the NIN, including a 'Needs and Deals' section where local deals that seek specialized guidance will be advertised. The website will also post bios and contact information for vetted mentors who can assist companies in other regions of the country.
PUBLICATIONS PRODUCED AS A RESULT OF THIS RESEARCH
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PROJECT OUTCOMES REPORT
Disclaimer
This Project Outcomes Report for the General Public is displayed verbatim as submitted by the Principal Investigator (PI) for this award. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this Report are those of the PI and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation; NSF has not approved or endorsed its content.
The I-Corps program was created and funded by the National Science Foundation to encourage innovation and economic growth by training academic researchers to successfully commercialize technology, using the Lean Startup methodology that helps define the private-sector customers of such technology and also refines the value that this technology would create for those customers. Innovation-Node Los Angeles (IN-LA), the Los Angeles Regional I-Corps Node funded through the NSF I-Corps Program, was one of nine I-Corps regional Nodes nationwide and the first Node in California. A collaboration of the University of Southern California (USC), the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), and the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), IN-LA worked with an additional 20 partner universities throughout the western United States and also New York State to train academic startup teams, as well as to ?train the trainers? at several of those institutions, thus enabling them to start their own Lean Startup training programs in their campuses.
IN-LA pioneered a regional training curriculum based on the Lean Startup methodology, and now adopted in varying forms by multiple regional I-Corps Nodes. Throughout its funding period between December 1, 2014 and October 31, 2021, IN-LA provided initial customer discovery training to over 650 startup teams and advanced regional training to over 160 teams, using curricula for basic training, as well for vetting teams for suitability for national training. Following on the Node?s regional training, IN-LA recruited and sponsored 59 teams, which participated in 7-week intensive NSF national I-Corps training cohorts. It achieved one of the highest percentages of accepted sponsorship recommendations among all regional Nodes. IN-LA also hosted [10?] national cohorts taught by instructors affiliated with the Node. It also participated in two pilot NSF programs, Mentor Pilot and Phase 0, designed to broaden the availability of I-Corps training outside traditional academic teams. IN-LA sponsored teams at national I-Corps cohorts using both programs.
In parallel, IN-LA provided multiple programs to enhance and expand the innovation ecosystem in Southern California by working with regional venture capital firms, accelerators and startup incubators. It helped introduce Node-affiliated teams to potential private funding sources, customers and development partners via the Node?s annual Technology Scouting Workshop in West Los Angeles. Startups participating in IN-LA training and events have raised over $1.1 billion in private funding.
IN-LA also built a robust academic research portfolio to examine the implementation and impacts of federal and private financing programs, resulting in four peer-reviewed publications, seven working papers, and over thirty conference presentations. In addition, the Node created and launched Patentopia, a public tool free for academics to easily pull pre-processed US patent data.
A special focus of IN-LA was on expanding STEM opportunities and training to traditionally underserved populations. The Node achieved the I-Corps program?s highest participation rates for startup teams involving women and minority founders; its management council ranged in female composition between 67-100%; all instructor teams typically included 50% or more of women and minorities; while 57% of sponsored teams included women. Finally, IN-LA conducted outreach at multiple universities and worked with several national organizations to encourage diverse participation in I-Corps training and STEM careers.
Last Modified: 03/01/2022
Modified by: Yannis C Yortsos
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