Back in October of last year while talking to two senior administrators at OU’s College of Medicine, I was walking them through what I wanted to be doing on the venture development front. Out of the blue I declared, “I’m tired of talking about what I want to do…so why don’t we just DO something? Why don’t I solicit our researchers and offer to take then through an ideation and strategy building process for those wanting to see their innovations commercialized?” And thus, Innovation Pathway was quickly born and put into the hands of our first cohort of researchers.
What is iPath?
Innovation Pathway, now called iPath, is a process to help a scientific researcher articulate the business value of their innovation. But it is also so much more!
It’s all about understanding the value of markets in getting innovations in the hands of users. It’s about briefly and succinctly explaining the application of the innovation to investors, customers, future employees, and others who can lend aid on the journey to the market. It’s about designing a workable strategy to obtain capital for commercialization activity and ultimately market presence. It’s even about learning how to leverage the knowledge of mentors and investors in realizing your dream of market impact.
The program can accommodate faculty, students or staff innovators from any of the OU campuses. Any OU founder – faculty, staff, or student – with an idea to test in the market is encouraged to apply. You can apply by clicking on the IPath Application link on our Office of Innovation and Corporate Partnerships website at https://ou.edu/oicp
On our website, you can find the entire list of things you will learn in the program, including market validation, customer discovery, finding the right investors, the components of a pitch, why investors say "no," presenting your opportunity, identifying funding needs, what investors look for, insights from entrepreneurs, developing your plan, and importantly, refining your financials.
We have refined the content down in such a way as to bring you all this via an online learning ideation program that lets you progress through it at your own pace – you just commit to six weekly hour-long sessions for review. And all this culminates in a two-full day commitment to attend the closing workshop focused on mentorship, capital strategy development and investor pitches.
But perhaps the most exciting part of the program is the speakers, investors and mentors that come in to spend time with us. It is these treasures that make us realize how networking, teamwork and joint efforts are what make the difference in successfully taking the pathway to the market.
What’s new in 2023?
After our first two very successful runs with iPath cohorts, it’s time for us to remodel it a bit to make it even more accessible to our researchers and innovators (founders), expand its reach and to make sure it is delivering the value a program like this should…at the right time for the participants.
For starters, we are going to break it down into its component parts so more founders can participate early on in their journey. We will do this by pulling the six-week ideation out as a stand-alone part of the process, expand it, and allow founders to rely on it to determine if they want to go to the next step in the commercialization process.
Secondly, we are going to take the financial and business planning section of iPath and make it also a stand-alone component. By doing this, we can provide participants access to our LivePlan subscription to enable them to do comprehensive business planning in furtherance of the work performed in the ideation phase.
Once both of those phases are done, the founder can opt into the capital strategy workshop. This two day in-person workshop will work much as it has in the past with pitch refinement, mentoring sessions and pitches to investors. The big difference will be that the participants will have fully completed the first two phases – with feedback – and won’t feel rushed into the capital strategy development phase too early.
There will be a separate application process for each phase. The Phase I for ideation and Phase II for business planning will both be done online. The Phase III workshop will remain in person. All three phases will prepare a founder to seek capital. BUT (and the great thing is) they are not required to do all three phases, just do them in sequence if they go all the way through to Phase III. And participants can “test out” of Phases I or II if certain requirements are met.
We will continue to run the program every time we have a sufficient number of participants to make a cohort worthwhile, usually 6 to 8. And as long as demand keeps up, we will run these at both the OU Health Sciences and Norman campus locations (and even Tulsa, too). Additionally, due to a PHF grant that we have received, I am pleased to announce that we will be accepting OMRF applicants, too!
The biggest change is that the pace through which founders approach the three phases is entirely up to them. iPath participants will have up to one year to complete their business plan after they finish ideation, and they can complete the entire three-phased program as quickly as they desire, too.
Ready to get started? Visit the Office of Innovation and Corporate Partnerships website at https://ou.edu/oicp click the iPath Application link to enroll in our next cohort.
Note: parts of this blog post originally appeared in the article “Innovation Pathway – What is iPath” published August 11, 2022.
