University of South Carolina I-CORPS

University of South Carolina I-CORPS is located in Columbia, United States on 301 Main Street. University of South Carolina I-CORPS is rated 3 out of 5 in the category higher education in United States. The long-term goal of the NSF I-Corps Site is to build a sustainable innovation ecosystem anchored at the University of South Carolina with strong links to the local entrepreneurial community. We seek to nurture science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) faculty and students who are engaged in projects having the potential to be transitioned into the marketplace. This will be accomplished through an integrated entrepreneurship curricula, business mentorship, and assignment of resources to early stage discoveries with potential commercial value. The program is open to faculty, fellows and student from the USC’s seven campuses. The I-Corps Site leverages existing research and innovation assets, commercialization infrastructure, network of industry experts, and business support to foster entrepreneurial developments on campus. In conjunction, it implements a hands-on training program based on the Lean LaunchPad methodology. Using this robust training framework as a springboard, teams perform customer discovery, form a value proposition, and put together a business model. After completing the program, participants will be prepared to either rethink their business models or move forward with commercialization. The promising projects will be positioned to take advantage of one-on-one business mentorship on start-up launch, SBIR/STTR applications, intellectual property issues and capital raise. Regardless of the customer discovery outcome, participants will develop invaluable skills that will inform their research, business and career.