Inovaed: A Model And Resource To Help Students Leverage Late Stage Intellectual Property

InovaED is a successful model in which students and student teams utilize late-stage underutilized or off-strategy intellectual property (IP) that has been donated or licensed by a variety of companies. Much of the IP is platform – it can be used in different ways in many different products. As a result, InovaED has produced a variety of startups and other ventures; thus, it facilitates both entrepreneurship education and economic development. InovaED is expanding to a broader community, including members of the National Collegiate Inventors and Innovators Alliance (NCIIA). Part of this expansion involves a web-based system including a searchable database and document management system containing over 300 industrial patents available for licensing. The system enables faculty and students to request and receive authorization to pursue projects using specific IP. It also enables them to contribute and search student project documents such as marketing studies, financial models, and design documents that could be utilized by other students and student teams, or by entrepreneurs under appropriate licenses. This expansion also includes a user manual for student teams, and workshops to help faculty at other institutions integrate InovaED into their courses. The InovaED model and database are now being used by other academic institutions, and additional institutions are welcome to participate in the project. This paper describes the InovaED model in more detail, including examples of resulting startups and new ventures. It also describes how the InovaED model is evolving based on experiences with other organizations, and the current status of the web-based database and document management system.