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Intellectual Property Office

Entrepreneurship Training

IPO I-Corps Lite 

Offered by IPO, this short course helps Lab employees embrace an entrepreneurial mindset and apply it to everyday lab activities. Whether one is developing a new invention, writing a grant proposal, planning a startup, optimizing an administrative process or pursuing a promotion, the I-Corps Program has valuable insights for any and all members of the Lab community.

The next I-Corps Lite Course will be held in September and October 2023. There will be four virtual sessions plus assignments.

Hear about Deepti Tanjore’s I-Corps experience.

Contact jgreeter@lbl.gov for more information or to register.

 

Of the 34 Berkeley Lab participants in previous short courses, 95% would enthusiastically recommend the course to a colleague, and 80% said the course changed their understanding of their technology’s market.

Testimonials

  • “I’m convinced it helped us clench an ARPA-E award. What I learned in I-Corps was absolutely essential to understanding and effectively articulating the business opportunity of our battery technology. It significantly altered our outlook on the technological demands necessary to gain market traction.” Peter Frischmann, former LBNL project scientist accepted into Cyclotron Road program, co-founder of Sepion Technologies
  • “I’ll never write a funding proposal the same way again.” Brett Helms, staff scientist, Molecular Foundry, co-founder of Sepion Technologies
  • “Customer discovery principles are influencing all aspects of my research at LBNL. I’m using them on a daily basis now and they will influence the rest of my career.” Peter Therkelsen, staff scientist in Building Technology and Urban Systems Division.

 

May 05, 2016- Lab-Corps graduates the 2nd Cohort class after a seven-week training session with 14 national laboratory teams in Golden, Colorado to accelerate the transfer of clean energy technologies from the national laboratories into the commercial marketplace. (Photo by Dennis Schroeder / NREL)

DOE’s Energy I-Corps Training

Based on NSF’s I-Corps™ model, DOE’s Energy I-Corps is an immersive training experience giving national lab-based research teams the tools and training to help transition technologies into products that benefit society and the national economy.

Highlights of the Energy I-Corps program include

  • 2 months and 100 interviews to give you opportunities to learn more about product-market fit, the business model canvas, and the commercial potential of your technology
  • Teams from all national labs so you can network with a broader group of business-minded researchers, mentors, and instructors
  • $75k per team to cover time so you don’t have to moonlight as much

Watch short films of LBNL researchers in the MyGreenCar team and Ring Burner team  as they participate in past Energy I-Corps sessions. Each film series captures the participants conducting information-gathering interviews with potential customers and supply chain members and then addressing hard decisions about markets, applications, and pivoting.

Contact ipo@lbl.gov if interested in future DOE I-Corps courses.

 

Intellectual Property Video Series

Want to learn more about IP and the patenting process? Check out the “Intellectual Property Memos” below.

Utility Patents, Infringers, and Salt


The Patent Process, Early Stage Technologies, and US Rights