WPI will be selecting 10 teams from the applicant pool for the Fall of 2020. The program will run from the end of September through the beginning of December. Teams will be asked to provide as much information as possible in their application, which will be circulated to a pool of mentors. You will then be assigned a mentor to help you throughout the program.
Good news! WPI has been has been funded by the National Science Foundation to conduct the NSF I-Corps™ Site program. Provided in partnership with the NE I-Corps at MIT.
About I-Corps
The I-Corps program provides financial and mentoring support to student and/or faculty teams who think they have an idea that addresses a market need and has commercial potential. Rather than develop and design something from the lab and then see if someone is interested, this program will teach the participants to develop their initial Value Proposition, and then “get out of the building” to test and refine that through customer interviews. This alters the traditional method of developing a technology, writing a business plan, and then going out to implement it. Instead, you will be challenged to seek the input from real customers, someone that will actually pay for the idea. This will include discovery from other stakeholders, recommenders, distribution channel participants, etc.
The WPI I-Corps™ Site program is fast paced and the teams will be pushed and challenged to hopefully learn quickly whether or not the ideas are worth pursuing. Teams are expected to conduct 30 customer interviews over the 10 week term of the program. For more about the benefits of the program, view the video made by VentureWell.
You can find out more about the National I-Corps program at: https://www.nsf.gov/news/special_reports/i-corps/