Objective
The I2I Program offers a unique entrepreneurship path by bridging the gap between research-based inventions and business innovation. Available to all students and faculty, the program introduces a fourth credit option that integrates academic learning with real-world innovation. Participants will have the opportunity to develop business concepts around curated inventions in collaboration with federal labs, universities, and external partners.
Purpose
This program promotes the importance of innovation-driven entrepreneurship at Bentley, empowering students to explore and commercialize new ideas. The I2I initiative enhances Bentley’s entrepreneurial ecosystem by introducing diverse disciplines to the process of innovation while connecting students to industry experts and research labs.
Collaboration with FLEX
A collaboration with the Federal Lab Education Accelerator program (FLEX) allows the E-Hub to open up a new pathway to entrepreneurship to Bentley students. This new pathway brings curated research inventions to Bentley students that they can explore for new applications and commercialization. This is a significant opportunity because it these research inventions represent investment of efforts (often millions of dollars by a team of scientists) and time (over a number of years to conceptualize, design and validate the invention). This is the opportunity that the E-Hub brings to the Bentley students. The E-Hub will maintain an inventory of curated inventions for participants to explore.
Fourth Credit Option
Although the FLEX program can share a list of curated inventions with the E-Hub, the pathway from invention to commercialization is, however, not easy and straightforward. The E-Hub has, therefore, structured this pathway as a Fourth Credit Option (Status: Being designed, Dec 2024), a mechanism familiar to the Bentley community. The E-Hub will emulate and refine this pathway (building on the effort from the Bentley Service Learning Center) with streamlined procedures, timelines and documents.
Scale and Incentives
The I2I initiative allow the E-Hub to bring several curated research-based inventions as candidates to develop this initiative at Bentley. We anticipate cultivating a group of about 10 faculty, across departments, who will develop and offer the Fourth Credit Option to Bentley students. The E-Hub will offer faculty who work with the E-Hub to offer this option to the Bentley students will be eligible for an initial incentive (as they start this program) and an ongoing incentive (based on the number of students in their classes who exercise the fourth credit option).
Roles and Responsibilities
The program is managed by the E-Hub. Faculty who participate in the I2I program (with the Fourth Credit Option structure) will be supported by the E-Hub in their efforts with streamlined procedures, templates and governance strategies. As a part of the program structure, the E-Hub will facilitate conversations with the research scientists, administration of the FLEX initiative, and governance within Bentley. The E-Hub has also set up templates, timelines and other resources that both, the faculty and students participating in the program, can draw on.
Working with the FLEX Program
Leadership from the FLEX program will participate each semester with an introduction to the program aimed at faculty as well as students. They will also ensure that work by the students is shared with the team of scientists and the appropriate research labs for any follow-up conversations related to licensing.
Accessing E-Hub Resources
Students participating in the I2I program will have access to several E-Hub resources, including the Coaching sessions, Speaker series, Mentor Networks, Curated Resources, the Orbit platform, the Somers Garage and many more.
Working with Mentors
The E-Hub encourages the students to connect with alumni and faculty mentors throughout the semester when they will engage with the I2I program. Some of the mentors have followed the path (as outlined in the I2I program) for building and growing their ventures. Their help and mentorship will be invaluable as the students progress through the semester. The E-Hub will facilitate these information sessions and conversations with the mentors. We particularly encourage the students to explore the potential of transforming your their efforts into a startup venture after the course ends. Conversations with the E-Hub, the E-Hub leadership and the research scientists are encouraged for this.
Building a Team
It is likely that multiple students (from different backgrounds and with a focus on different functional areas) will be working with the same research-based invention as a part of this program. For example, some may be focused on marketing, others may be focused on experience design, yet others may consider finance or operations and so on. As the semester winds down, this will present an opportunity to the students to bring together their work and build a viable team to pursue a startup. The E-Hub encourages the students to also consider visiting the Orbit Platform to access any additional expertise that will allow them to round up their team.
Pursuing a Startup
With the team in place, the students are likely to compete effectively in the Incubator Program to pursue a startup. Here, they can set themselves up for success by communicating with the E-Hub, the FLEX program and the research scientists to establish viability of their product or service offering, explore feasibility of potential licensing alternatives, and bringing on board mentors and scientits who can help them to build their start-up. The E-Hub will help to facilitate these conversations.