How can we help university economic development teams and faculty/student entrepreneurs commercialize their research and successfully take them to market?
UNLV
PROJECT TYPE
Innovation Program Build and Launch
CONTEXT
Black Fire Innovation, the applied research and innovation center at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, works with faculty and research teams whose work generates valuable intellectual property, but who don’t necessarily have a path to turn that research into a company. Black Fire wanted a structured way to help its scientists explore whether their work could become a venture, and to support the ones that did.
We designed a venture-building framework combining structured e-learning with hands-on mentoring, built specifically for faculty and research teams rather than traditional founders. We piloted the program over two cohorts of eight scientists each, drawn from different colleges, to confirm the approach worked across disciplines.
Two ideas from the program stood out. One, a water harvesting technology developed by a UNLV engineering team, became the foundation for a startup that has since secured real investment and continues to operate today. The other, an orthodontic innovation, led its inventor to a key realization: the question wasn't what device he had built, but what full solution the market needed. Out of 20 ideas that went through the program, these two results are exactly what Black Fire was looking for.
