Universities: Your New Best Friend

 

More Flexible VC Funding

Historically, university-run venture-capital funds have backed only teachers or alumni. No longer. Pennsylvania State University's student-managed Garber Fund invests in businesses outside the university. The University of Michigan's Wolverine Venture Fund (www.zli.bus.umich.edu/wolverine_vent_fund/) prefers companies with a blue-and-gold connection; simply employing an alum is enough. Penn State's Farrell Center for Entrepreneurship (www.smeal.psu.edu/fcfe) is run by a VC who trolls for deals at his day job. Meanwhile, the University of Maryland College Park's Dingman Center for Entrepreneurship (www.rhsmith.umd.edu/dingman) is much more focused: it seeks early-stage high-tech companies in low-income areas.

Design Makeovers

The Center for Design & Business (www.centerdesignbusiness.org), in Providence, a five-year-old joint venture between Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) and Bryant College, offers business help to designers and design help to businesses. In one part of the program, artists and designers with an idea for a product can take classes in entrepreneurial basics, such as writing a business plan or learning the ABCs of accounting. A second part is directed at established businesses that need to design a new product or refresh an old one. For $750, a company gets a two-hour brainstorming session with a roundtable of experts that includes design faculty or students from RISD and management faculty from Bryant, as well as other area experts and professionals.

Vouchers

The National Network for Technology Entrepreneurship and Commercialization (www.n2tec.org), based at the University of Southern California, links up universities across the country to help faculty and student entrepreneurs tap a broad range of management and technical expertise. It also extends that privilege to minority- and female-owned businesses outside the academic world. Those businesses are eligible to receive vouchers good for purchasing up to $5,000 worth of resources at USC and ultimately other universities in the network, including technology licenses, consulting services from business-school faculty and students, and the use of university facilities, like laboratories and machine shops.

Meanwhile, under the two-year-old Kentucky Innovation Act, small and midsize Kentucky companies can use awards from the Kentucky Research and Development Voucher Fund (www.tig.kstc.com) to pay for R&D services at any accredited university in the state. Awards can run up to $200,000 over two years, and companies are required to match the award dollar for dollar, although they can use a mixture of cash and equity to do so.

Matchmakers

Companies have sprouted up to help businesses find the right professor for their needs. One is TechKnowledge Point (www.techknowledgepoint.com). B-school profs can put their profiles on the site, listing their qualifications. For a fee of $100 a year, CEOs can search the database to find the expert they're seeking. Utek Corp. (www.utekcorp.com) acts more as an intermediary in the important but often confusing area of technology transfer, helping small businesses license school technology.

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