Researchers and inventors can sometimes develop what they think are solutions to today’s problems without taking the time to understand the needs of their potential customers.
However, Himanshu Sant, the University of Utah National Science Foundation’s Innovation Corps (I-Corps™) Program faculty PI, suggested using a “pull” approach when it comes to innovation rather than trying to “push” the solution into the market.
Sant, a U chemical engineering professor who has also been involved in the formation of multiple companies, participated in the I-Corps program in 2019 and continues to apply the lessons he learned to his current research.
“I-Corps is mainly geared towards not just translation of technologies, but also the training part and getting students or postdocs out of the lab and talking to people to get that entrepreneurship perspective,” Sant said.
The program encourages participants—grad students, postdocs, researchers and faculty—to invest time in customer discovery and market analysis through practical exercises while also developing a community of likeminded entrepreneurs and academics.
Not only does I-Corps teach participants how to translate their ideas out of the lab and into the marketplace, but it can also give them a leg up when it comes to grants like the SBIR and STTR grants offered by the federal government.
“Research always has less funding than you want,” Sant said. “After I-Corps, our SBIR grants have been better. Now, we are thinking about how to frame the questions and statements a little bit better. What are we actually doing? What are we trying to do with this particular project? And how is this going to move the needle?”
Sant has received multiple SBIR grants to support the translation of his research that is centered on applications for biosensors, microfluidics, medical devices and more.
For example, Sant recently put his I-Corps training to use when he applied for a Phase 2 SBIR grant from the National Institutes of Health. During the customer discovery process, Sant and his team discovered that rather than test their microsurgery device in gradually larger animals, people were more interested in how small they could go.
“Not only did that help us to write the commercialization plan around it, but that also drew some of our specific aims,” he said.
With these grants, Sant and his team are able to ensure their projects can have a real impact. One of the startups Sant works with has been developing a pathogen detection system for the U.S. Army to ensure its food and water is safe around the world. While the research has primarily been around applications for the Army, Sant said it doesn’t have to end there. “Then you can use that scenario and say, ‘If you have someone that is not connected to the grid or they are in a low resource setting, would you be able to use sensors like this for that?’”
Sant said he hopes to expand the U’s commercialization efforts and impact through the I-Corps program. “The program is not just looking into investing in the technology or the science behind it, but also the people.”
For anyone looking into the program or just starting I-Corps, Sant advised new participants to go out and meet people.
“Feel free to take other people's point of view and try to see what they are coming from. Sometimes they will say, ‘Ah, this is not important to me.’ But then you should go and ask, ‘OK, then what is important to you?’” Sant said. “You’re just trying to understand what pain points that person has and then you infer from that data if what you’re making is going to help that person or not.”
