Dayton, Ohio: A pilot program for integrating applied research with entrepreneurship

Dayton, Ohio, is not typically revered as a model for how to drive a regional startup economy. But it should be.

In Dayton, researchers at the Air Force Research Lab in Wright Patterson Air Force Base integrate with entrepreneurs to commercialize inventions through new ventures. There is a physical wall standing between the lab and entrepreneurs, but not a cultural one. In Dayton, “innovation,” “tech,” and “entrepreneurship” were yesterday’s buzzphrases; “technology transfer” is the only buzzphrase that gets anyone excited in Dayton.

This is the kind of integrated environment that we sought to build when we launched Invent2026 last year. Our organization supports technology transfer from the laboratory, and the buildout and growth of new ventures that are commercializing lab-generated technologies. We’re not an incubator, we’re an integrator.

And it is in Dayton that we intend to show how Invent2026 will build a Midwest innovation corridor, opening the doors of applied research laboratories to entrepreneurs. Dayton, in short, will be a test run for what we intend to build in Chicago and throughout the Midwest region.

Due Diligence

With our friends at The Entrepreneurs Center in Dayton, Ohio, Invent2026 will be supporting a $1.2 million grant program, providing non-dilutive grants to new ventures that are commercializing lab-generated technologies in the State of Ohio. Alex Duchak, the other Invent2026 cofounder, is serving in an advisory capacity for the companies chosen to receive the grants.

This money has been appropriated under the State of Ohio’s Third Frontier program, a voter-approved statewide network of resources providing capital, business services, and talent to innovative companies in Ohio. Grants will be provided to startups up to $50,000.

We call these grants part of our “Diligence Fund” — the first of our three core Invent2026 programs, working together to drive a Midwest innovation corridor.

Of course the State of Illinois doesn’t have $1.2 million to give away, so we are working with corporate partners to capitalize the Diligence Fund and drive the movement of technologies through new ventures.

The exchange is this: By capitalizing the Diligence Fund, you will be able to watch the movement of technologies in your sector, or gain a host of other opportunities as these new ventures grow. We will prepare these startups for mergers and acquisitions, not venture funding, tweaking products and processes to fit the needs of our corporate partners.

For investors and end-acquirers, these grants provide a measure of due-diligence, allowing technologies to take shape through new ventures before an acquisition is made.

Distill and Discover

The Invent2026 process begins at the laboratory.

A familiar struggle of inventors and laboratories is to translate their concepts into accessible representations, wherein the applications and appropriate markets are clear to entrepreneurs and industry partners who can introduce these inventions into the commercial market. That’s why Invent2026 is supporting our “Distill and Discover” program, providing workshops and development support to laboratories and inventors seeking to build inventions into new products.

The goal of Distill and Discover is to produce user-centric, easy-to-understand summaries of inventions, including step-by-step descriptions of how to use the inventions, and explanations of the invention’s benefits.

We have already worked with several Department of Defense laboratories to distill their inventions into accessible representations of their functions, and support licensing of their inventions to startup entrepreneurs.

Later this summer, we will introduce TNEBULA, an online, gameified platform for presenting lab-generated inventions in front of a domain of users, including entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, and product developers. TNEBULA, which is supported by $350,000 in grants from the U.S. Department of Defense, will provide a virtual village square where the region’s inventors and entrepreneurs can collaboratively uncover uses, markets, and commercial pathways for inventions generated at laboratories like Argonne, the University of Chicago’s Institute of Molecular Engineering, Northwestern’s Transportation Center, and the Department of Defense’s laboratories.

Develop and Deploy

Next month, Invent2026 will launch our “Develop and Deploy” program in Dayton, supporting companies chosen to receive Third Frontier grants.

Develop and Deploy will provide programming targeted at entrepreneurs who are commercializing inventions from university and federally-supported laboratories. Through Develop and Deploy, Invent2026 will help entrepreneurs identify markets and uses most appropriate for these inventions, construct a development plan, target capacity-building funding both from the U.S. Small Business Administration’s SBIR program and from private-sector sources, and ensure the completion of a minimum-viable product.

Invent2026 has assembled an advisory board who will take a hands-on, front-seat role in driving the movement of technologies through new ventures. These advisors include Steve Fifita, the former director of UI Labs’ City Digital; Joe Renz, the founder of New Mobility Lab; and Hal Tezcan, the managing partner of Startup Port.

Invent2026’s portfolio companies are managing valuable intellectual properties, with many interested stakeholders invested in the success of these new ventures. Because the stakes are so high, our advisors will be taking on a much stronger role in product development than are typically seen in incubators and accelerators.

In Chicago, Develop and Deploy will take the form of a fellowship program we are building for entrepreneurs who are specifically targeting capital from the SBIR program (…stay tuned).

Progress

What does this look like when it all comes together? When technologies have been distilled, a business plan has been crafted, and diligence funds have been provided?

It might look like AquaGrow, a new startup founded by an Argonne researcher that is enabling the sustainable indoor production of fruits and vegetables, using fish protein, collected in a fish tank and channeled into an adjacent growing space. The AquaGrow team is also exploring how to accelerate their food production with light fixtures that concentrate blue and red light, the two primary colors that drive plant growth — reflecting green light, which is not does not support plant growth.

It might also look like Contect, Inc. software company that is developing a mobile software app designed to quickly identify if an injured athlete has suffered from a head injury, evaluating the player’s speech and pupils. Contect has received funding from the National Institute of Health, the National Football League, and the United States Army, to design and test the software.

These are just two portfolio companies who will prove the idea behind Invent2026: That by building new ventures around lab-generated inventions, we can catalyze robust and inclusive economic growth in the Midwest.

We will be supporting these new ventures in Dayton, Ohio, not Chicago — at least not yet.

We have been told many times over the past few months that we are reaching a “renaissance period” in technology transfer, where the outside world is reaching into applied research laboratories, and these laboratories are reaching back out — and reaching out to startups.

Invent2026 will the platform for those exchanges.

Thomas Day is the co-founder of Invent2026. This opinion piece included a great deal of insight from the other Invent2026 partner and co-founder, Alex Duchak.