Program Elements

Enhancing Entrepreneurship through Lean Startup Virtual Cohorts

References:1. Blank and Dorf. The Startup Owner’s Manual: The Step-By-Step Guide for Building a Great Company. K&S Ranch. 2012.2. Ries, Eric. The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses. Penguin Books Limited. 2011.3. Osterwalder and Yves. Business Model Generation. John Wiley & Sons. 2010.4. Osterwalder, Pigneur, Bernarda, and Smith. The Value Proposition Design. John Wiley & Sons. 2014.

Design: Vickie Eiden, MA, Center for Technology Commercialization

IntroductionWisconsin has a strong University system innovating across multiple industries, including a rich history of generating IP and commercializing technology from the Madison campus - a nationally recognized research university.

Problems: • There is limited focus on IP and commercialization of ideas from the smaller, UW System compre-

hensive campuses situated throughout the state.

• Ideas stall due to lack of early funding to de-risk innovations and better align them with market needs.

Solution: University/State supported Ideadvance Seed Fund to fund and guide innovative early-stage ideas. Herein we report on efforts related to Stage 1 of our two-staged funding process.

Program Process

Reportable Stage 1 Impacts June – December 2014• Awarded Stage 1 funds in first 2 cohorts: $417,500

• Reported capital infusion: $469,700

• 1 Submitted NIH STTR

• Pilot with large fast food franchise

• Corporate engagements to develop Lean Startup programming: 2

• Ideadvance platform led to build out of the SBIR Advance matching program providing $1M from Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation (WEDC) to high-tech companies with federal Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR)/Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) funding • This program predicts accelerated commercialization to result in 10 new jobs and

over $1M in follow-on funding

• Demand for program prompted CTC to ask for another $1M from WEDC

Conclusions & Lessons LearnedSupport is critical. Candidates require pre- AND post-award support to understand, define and evaluate business risks.

• Pre Award Support Efforts: Candidates are often not part of University communities where entrepreneurship is championed. To improve the quality of proposals, we spend time helping them unpack misconceptions about what makes a high impact business proposal. Often we are the first to challenge candidates to think bigger than their campus and communities. Efforts include connecting to business mentors, coaching on early customer discovery activities, and editing proposals.

• Post Award Support Efforts: The tendency is to focus on technology risk instead of market risk. Even with established companies, we spend significant time helping them understand the difference between the two. To facilitate this learning, we rely on 1- on- 1 mentoring with Ideadvance program leaders in collaboration with their individual business mentors to recalibrate teams so they focus on validating critical business metrics. This approach also helps set expectations to keep teams engaged and focused on pursuing milestones for Ideadvance funding.

Cohorts including faculty, staff, students and companies work as long as all teams are held to the same rigorous high standards.

• Students learn professionalism and research best practices from faculty.

• Faculty learn new technology resources from students.

• Established businesses help newer ideas & teams to forecast future needs as they build their business.

The platform expands Lean Startup across the state.

• The program has trained 6 new Lean Startup coaches across the state including counselors from the WI Small Business Development Centers.

• Ideadvance has received interest from large corporations to learn more about Lean Startup.

• The experiential learning and virtual platform promotes entrepreneurial skills and confidence for University communities that may not have these resources on their campus.

Participant Details

Participant Locations

Impact Outcomes

University of Wisconsin-ExtensionCenter for Technology Commercialization, Madison, WI

Idella Yamben, Ph.D. & Eric Steege, MBA