An expert in teaching the National Science Foundation’s i-CorpsTM methodology, which takes a business-inspired approach to research, Wasko kicked off by saying, “The CCTS asks ‘are we doing science right?’, but i-Corps asks an equally important question, ‘are we doing the right science?’ Our goal in i-Corps is to train funded researchers on how to evaluate their scientific discoveries for commercial potential.”
She explained that i-Corps is the premiere federally funded innovation and commercialization program in the U.S., a national network with regional nodes, including more than 800 teams at 192 universities in 44 states. It has helped form 320 companies and raise more than $83 million in follow-on funding. “Six new agencies are now adopting iCorps, including NCATS, because it works!”
While acknowledging most scientists aren’t interested in becoming business people, she noted the need to justify how federal dollars are spent isn’t restricted to the NIH but gets passed along to grantees in the form of pressure to “increase the economic impact of the $30 billion in research dollars invested every year.” When scientists work on problems that are important to them, without checking if the problems are important to the community, they can waste precious resources creating solutions to problems that people don’t really care about. Wasko called this the “if you build it they will come” fallacy and says i-Corps represents a fundamental shift in thinking. “In i-Corps, customers come first, and the #1 step is to develop a business thesis that answers three questions: who is your customer, what is your product, and why would they buy it?”
“The #1 myth,” she said, “is customers want your technology. They don’t! They want their problems solved, their jobs done, their pain killed, and their dreams achieved.” She encouraged investigators in the audience to interview prospective customers of their research, applying the scientific method to test ideas. “A big mistake is building a prototype, protocol, or innovation before testing the assumption that people will love it.” To illustrate, she led the group in an exercise developing a business thesis for an auto autopilot device.
In conclusion, Wasko reiterated the many benefits of participating in the i-Corps program—“It will make you a better scientist, help you write more compelling grants, increase the chance your science will make a difference, and help you train the next generation of translational scientists.” Participating at the national level can also result in winning $50,000 to use for customer discovery, she added.
There are numerous i-Corps opportunities for interested scientists, including