After a successful pilot led in large part by STEM Education Center co-director Dr. Karl Smith, the National Science Foundation has granted $1.2 million to support the next 24 I-Corps for Learning teams.

The I-Corps for Learning (I-Corps-L)  project was designed to guide research teams on how to use business strategies to propagate and scale their educational innovations. 

Steve Blank, key architect of the I-Corps model and author of  “The Startup Owner’s Manual”  wrote in the Huffington Post, “It turns out that on the whole educators are great innovators but have had a hard time translating their ideas into widespread adoption.”

With this in mind, Don Millard of NSF and  Karl Smith developed the I-Corps for learning project using Blank’s Lean LaunchPad system. Blank writes, “Karl and his teaching team really nailed it. So much so that the NSF is now rolling out I-Corps for Learning on a larger scale.” Read more of Blank’s blog here.

Congratulations to the I-Corps for Learning team! The STEM Center is excited to hear more about future team accomplishments and further advances to the I-Corps initiative.