Activities
VentureWell funds and trains student and faculty innovators through grants, competitions and workshops, committing $1.5 million every year to assist student innovators and the faculty that enable their work.
| Formation | 1995 |
|---|---|
| Type | Non-Profit |
| Purpose | Higher Education, Invention, Entrepreneurship |
| Headquarters | Hadley, Massachusetts |
Region served | United States |
CEO/President | Phil Weilerstein |
| Website | VentureWell.org |
VentureWell, formerly known as the National Collegiate Inventors and Innovators Alliance (NCIIA), is a private 501(c)(3) organization that funds and trains faculty and student innovators to create successful, socially beneficial businesses. The organization's mission is to create experiential learning opportunities for students and to catalyze student-led ventures that create positive social and environmental impact. [1]
VentureWell's early stage funding and training opportunities supported the creation of more than 180 new businesses across an array of industries, which have leveraged more than $620 million in additional funding. [2]
In 1995, a group of higher education faculty and administrators gathered at Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts to discuss how universities might provide students with the tools they need to transform their ideas into viable businesses. [3] Jerome Lemelson, one of the U.S.’s most prolific inventors, convened the meeting.
In the meeting, Lemelson described his vision for an organization that would support educators in implementing a hands-on approach to learning while at the same time helping students develop new products and boost them toward commercialization.
VentureWell was created out of this vision. [4] VentureWell, initially part of Hampshire College’s Lemelson National Program and funded primarily by The Lemelson Foundation, became a stand-alone non-profit entity in 2007. It has grown to include a membership of nearly 200 colleges and universities [5] from across the U.S., engaging over 5,000 undergraduate and graduate student entrepreneurs each year.
VentureWell funds and trains student and faculty innovators through grants, competitions and workshops, committing $1.5 million every year to assist student innovators and the faculty that enable their work.
In 2007, Eben Bayer and Gavin McIntyre, two graduating students at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, got a $16,000 VentureWell grant that funded a few critical months of development. Ecovative Design [7] —their company makes building insulation and packaging materials from mushrooms, a material they call Greensulate—went on to win awards from the state of New York and Europe's PICNIC Green Challenge, [8] among others.
Another VentureWell-sponsored team from the University of Portland turned a $12,500 grant into a company with more than $2.5 million in annual sales. The company, Keen Healthcare, [9] was founded to commercialize a shock-absorbing crutch and now sells twenty-five different products that help injured, disabled, and elderly people move around more easily.
Dean Lawrence Kamen is an American engineer, inventor, and businessman. He is known for his invention of the Segway and iBOT, as well as founding the non-profit organization FIRST with Woodie Flowers. Kamen holds over 1,000 patents.
Kettering University is a private university in Flint, Michigan. It offers bachelor of science and master’s degrees in STEM and business fields. Kettering University undergraduate students are required to complete at least five co-op terms to graduate.
The University of New Hampshire (UNH) is a public land-grant research university with its main campus in Durham, New Hampshire. It was founded and incorporated in 1866 as a land grant college in Hanover and moved to Durham in 1893, and adopted its current name in 1923.
Jerome "Jerry" Hal Lemelson was an American engineer, inventor, and patent holder. Several of his inventions and works in the fields in which he patented have made possible, either wholly or in part, innovations like automated warehouses, industrial robots, cordless telephones, fax machines, videocassette recorders, camcorders, and the magnetic tape drive used in Sony's Walkman tape players. Lemelson's 605 patents made him one of the most prolific inventors in American history.
Funding is the act of providing resources to finance a need, program, or project. While this is usually in the form of money, it can also take the form of effort or time from an organization or company. Generally, this word is used when a firm uses its internal reserves to satisfy its necessity for cash, while the term financing is used when the firm acquires capital from external sources.
Google.org, founded in October 2005, is the charitable arm of Google, a multinational technology company. The organization has committed roughly US$100 million in investments and grants to nonprofits annually.
The Scheller College of Business is the business school at the Georgia Institute of Technology, a public research university in Atlanta, Georgia. It was established in 1912, and is consistently ranked in the top 30 business programs in the nation.
The Lemelson Foundation is an American 501(c)(3) private foundation. It was started in 1993 by Jerome H. Lemelson and his wife Dorothy. The foundation held total net assets of US$444,124,049 at the end of 2020 and US$484,432,021 at the end of 2021.
Corporate venture capital (CVC) is the investment of corporate funds directly in external startup companies. CVC is defined by the Business Dictionary as the "practice where a large firm takes an equity stake in a small but innovative or specialist firm, to which it may also provide management and marketing expertise; the objective is to gain a specific competitive advantage." Examples of CVCs include GV and Intel Capital.
The Utah Science Technology and Research Initiative (USTAR) is a technology-based economic development agency funded by the state of Utah. The organization works to develop ideas and research into marketable products and successful companies through its competitive grant and entrepreneur support programs. USTAR facilitates the diversification of the state’s tech economy, increases private follow-on investment, and supports the creation of technology-based start-up firms, higher-paying jobs and additional business activity leading to a statewide expansion of Utah’s tax base.
The Foundation for Independent Higher Education (FIHE) is the national office for a network of state-based private college fundraising associations in the United States. It was founded in 1958 as the Independent College Funds of America (ICFA). In 2010 it merged into the Council of Independent Colleges. FIHE was created to support the work of the regional fundraising consortia to secure additional financial resources in support of America's independent colleges and universities and their students. FIHE today supports 38 state consortia through member services programs, professional development workshops, collaborative initiatives, and grant programs made possible by gifts from corporations as well as from its own endowment. Based in Washington, DC, FIHE has provided nearly $100 million in grants to and through its member state consortia, and has had a tangible impact on the growth and development of the private college sector in America.
The University of Toledo is a public research university in Toledo, Ohio, United States. It is the northernmost campus of the University System of Ohio. The university also operates a 450-acre (180 ha) Health Science campus, which includes the University of Toledo Medical Center, in the West Toledo neighborhood of Toledo; the Center for the Visual Arts is located in downtown Toledo at the Toledo Museum of Art; and a research and education facility, known as the Lake Erie Center, at Maumee Bay State Park.
Ecovative Design LLC is a materials company headquartered in Green Island, New York, that provides sustainable alternatives to plastics and polystyrene foams for packaging, building materials and other applications by using mushroom technology.
Sandbox Industries is a venture capital firm located in Chicago. The firm focuses on connecting established corporations with disruptive startups via strategic corporate investment funds.
Ramesh Raskar is a Massachusetts Institute of Technology associate professor and head of the MIT Media Lab's Camera Culture research group. Previously he worked as a senior research scientist at Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories (MERL) during 2002 to 2008. He holds 132 patents in computer vision, computational health, sensors and imaging. He received the $500K Lemelson–MIT Prize in 2016. The prize money will be used for launching REDX.io, a group platform for co-innovation in Artificial Intelligence. He is well known for inventing EyeNetra, EyeCatra and EyeSelfie, Femto-photography and his TED talk for cameras to see around corners.
Lawrence B. Schook is the vice president for research at the University of Illinois. He oversees the $1 billion research portfolio across all three campuses. A scholar in comparative genomics and the exploitation of genomic diversity to understand traits and disease, Dr. Schook focuses his research on genetic resistance to disease, regenerative medicine, and using genomics to create animal models for biomedical research. He led the international pig genome-sequencing project, which produced a draft of the pig genome allowing researchers to offer insights into diseases that afflict pigs and humans.
Tecterra, usually written as TECTERRA or TECTERRA Inc., is a Canadian geomatics technology innovation support centre. Established in June 2010 as a non-profit organization, Tecterra assists geomatics technology companies across Alberta to achieve commercial success faster than they can on their own. With current funding from the Government of Alberta, Tecterra is focused on investing in geomatics innovation for resource management and other markets. The organization's funding model is unique, as support for companies does not require intellectual property ownership or corporate equity in exchange for funds.
Science and technology in Kazakhstan – government policies to develop science, technology and innovation in Kazakhstan.
University technology transfer offices (TTOs), or technology licensing offices (TLOs), are responsible for technology transfer and other aspects of the commercialization of research that takes place in a university. TTOs engage in a variety of commercial activities that are meant to facilitate the process of bringing research developments to market, often acting as a channel between academia and industry. Most major research universities have established TTOs in the past decades in an effort to increase the impact of university research and provide opportunities for financial gain. While TTOs are commonplace, many studies have questioned their financial benefit to the university.
The University Innovation Fellows Program is an international innovation fellowship program for undergraduate and graduate students based at Stanford University. The UIF program was created in 2012.
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
