Experiential Education in Translational Research Through Engagement of Entrepreneurial Ecosystem

The strategic plan of most research universities promote research translation: i.e., evolving the significant societal potential of research into significant societal impact, and improving the return on society’s investment in academia. Research translation is also a national priority, as demonstrated by the I-Corps and Accelerating Research Translation programs of the National Science Foundation. These strategic plans and programs promote entrepreneurship as an avenue for research translation. However, traditional entrepreneurship education is not well suited for research translation – few academic researchers have the business acumen needed to run a high-tech startup with a wide "valley of death," the focus is on venture creation while largely ignoring technology transfer, most STEM graduates are greeted with good job prospects, and entrepreneurship is rarely a consideration in university promotion and tenure.We present a graduate experiential entrepreneurship course in which research-active students work with regional entrepreneurs interested in university intellectual property (IP) to which the students contributed. Students participate in the protection of their IP, its licensing to regional entrepreneurs, and help entrepreneurs integrate the IP into the venture’s business model and secure equity-based and grant-based startup funding. Because these students are intimately familiar with their innovation, they articulate its value proposition and advise on how to integrate it into the entrepreneur’s business model. Students receive firsthand experience in deep-tech entrepreneurship, aid the university’s technology transfer office, and help the regional entrepreneurial ecosystem – all valuable experiences for when students later in life decide to embark on STEM entrepreneurship for themselves.