Jeff Bocan: Hidden Tech-Driven Gems Make America a Richer Nation
DETROIT -- Beringea Managing Director Jeff Bocan's latest Huffington Post blog entry, "The Scientific 'Antiques Roadshow': Hidden Tech-Driven Gems Make America a Richer Nation," recaps his experiences as a venture capital faculty member at the National Science Foundation's Innovation Corps program, delivered in partnership with the University of Michigan.
I-Corps was designed to fast-track government-funded research from the lab to the real world. The program's curriculum helps develop scientific and engineering discoveries into useful technologies, products and processes that have value in the marketplace.
Bocan's Huffington Post blog series focuses on venture investing in Michigan and other Rust Belt economies, shedding light on the opportunities and challenges awaiting entrepreneurs and the investors who support them.
To read future blog entries by Bocan, visit www.huffingtonpost.com/jeff-bocan.
In his current post, Bocan calls I-Corps "the scientific version of PBS' Antiques Roadshow -- NSF-funded technological gems that have largely been tucked away in the labs of America's research institutions are being dusted off, given a heavy dose of commercial polish and have been unearthed to unlock the potential to create a lot of value for the technologists, their universities and society in general."
He says I-Corps forces would-be entrepreneurs to talk to at least 100 potential customers, partners, suppliers and competitors in six weeks. Said Bocan: "This disciplined 'customer discovery' takes notions about the new technology out of the lab, often for the first time, to confront the harsh commercial world realities and usually are met with quite unexpected results."
