Innovating Early: Entrepreneurship Assistants Program Is the First to Embrace Early-Stage Assessment of New Inventions for Commercialization

At any given time, only 5% of patents filed worldwide ever get licensed, and 90% of startups fail, according to industry and U.S. Bureau of Labor statistics.

An innovative program in Georgia Tech’s Office of Commercialization believes that assessing the commercialization potential of new inventions earlier could improve their likelihood of success in transitioning from the research lab to the commercial market.

Now in its third cohort, the Entrepreneurship Assistants Program (EAP) pairs a Scheller College of Business MBA student with a student or faculty researcher behind the invention. The students leverage a suite of market analysis tools to assess its market potential.

“Our goal is to simplify the process of advancing an invention to commercialization, whether through licensing or attracting funding to establish a startup,” says Paul Joseph, a former principal research scientist at Georgia Tech’s Institute for Electronics and Nanotechnology who joined the Office of Commercialization in 2023. In this new role as principal, he developed the EAP in the Office’s newest unit, Quadrant-i. 

Early-Stage Assessments

Georgia Tech’s program focuses on early-stage assessment of an invention’s market potential.

“This is about de-risking the technology — to help researchers understand what’s required to develop a minimum viable product to push the technology readiness level up to attract funding or investments,” says Joseph.

One technology assessed by EAP recently received a $50,000 Georgia Research Alliance grant.

Jonathan Goldman, Quadrant-i’s director, hopes the program will help inspire Georgia Tech research faculty to embrace entrepreneurship more broadly. 

“Georgia Tech President Ángel Cabrera set the goal to triple the number of startups between 2019 and 2029 soon after he was appointed,” recalls Goldman, noting that the program could accelerate that effort while reversing a national trend of university licensing offices losing money while helping researchers pursue startups. 

Georgia Tech is no stranger to supporting commercialization efforts with research. The EAP was derived from the National Science Foundation's Innovation Corps (I-Corps) program, which trains researchers and their entrepreneurial leads to do customer discovery of their innovations to develop a go/no go decision around launching a business. Goldman served as a mentor for several Georgia Tech i-Corps teams between 2015 and 2020. 

Market Viability of New Innovations

Today’s EAP has attracted enthusiastic participation from Scheller College students in the Technology Innovation: Generating Economic Results (TI:GER®) program, which integrates classroom instruction and technology-innovation projects into practical, real-world experiences. 

Lithium-Ion Battery Recycling

One TI:GER participant, Analisa Wade, a former digital transformation consultant,  participated in two EAP assessments, including one during the pilot program, where she evaluated a novel approach to recycling lithium-ion batteries used to power electric cars. Handling the batteries is both costly and dangerous due to their tendency to ignite. Recycling the batteries currently costs more than mining the raw materials. 

“I knew nothing about lithium-ion batteries. This program allowed me to dive deep and speak with people who could help me understand how the technology has evolved.”

Wade worked with a master’s chemistry student from a faculty inventor’s lab, and both attended a conference in Detroit focused on lithium-ion battery advances to conduct customer discovery interviews and validate the value proposition of this new battery recycling technology. 

“The experience was extremely valuable, especially as a previous entrepreneur. I had experience running a business, but this gave me another way of looking at it, especially from a technological commercialization standpoint,” says Wade, who will work for Microsoft after she completes her MBA in the spring.

To date, the EAP has assessed 21 breakthroughs, and the comprehensive assessment report generated by the students helped inform proposals to support commercialization.

For the licensing associates in the Office of Commercialization, the reports are “highly detailed, realistic, and thorough,” says senior licensing associate Michael Varon. “The students invested a lot of time and energy identifying partners and potential problems. I prefer this type of assessment report over the report we get from an external assessment firm.”

Mary Albertson, director of the Office of Technology Licensing, says the deliverables provided to her team, including a comprehensive report and a summary video, “have become the cornerstone of our marketing efforts.”

She adds, “Our mission is to move Georgia Tech discoveries from the benchtop to the public and make a positive impact. Communicating the stage and value of the technology to industry partners is a critical step.” 

Efficient Satellite Propulsion

William Trenton Gantt, a U.S. Army veteran and engineer enrolled in the TI:GER program, analyzed a Georgia Tech propellant management device that would enable satellite platforms to utilize a one-tank system instead of a two-tank system, allowing for more revenue-generating payloads. His research included customer discovery interviews with smallsat manufacturers such as Kuiper and Starfish Space, as well as SoloPulse, a radar detection company in Atlanta.

“We talked with them about their challenges with mission endurance and what kind of systems their satellite buses use,” recalls Gantt, who is in the final semester of his MBA studies and will be working for Collins Aerospace. “For cubesats, we’re seeing a lot more hybrid systems based on the use case of the satellite customers. These customers are using hybrid propulsion systems, both gas and electric, to maximize the lifespan of their cubesat assets and create as much value from them as possible. It’s much more attractive for these satellite bus manufacturers to take on less equipment, so having a reduction in a fuel tank like our technology is something that’s a big market need right now.”

Brine-Free Water Desalination

Another Georgia Tech innovation evaluated a water desalination technique called salinity exchange electrodialysis, a process that uses selective ion exchange membranes to separate seawater and wastewater and can produce high-quality desalinated water at a lower energy cost than conventional methods. 

According to Rakesh Shankar, a master’s student in the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering, “The technology is energy- and cost-efficient,” using only one kilowatt of energy. It does not produce brine, a byproduct of wastewater that contains a high salt concentration, making it environmentally unfriendly.

Pascaline Ezouah, an Evening MBA student set to graduate from Scheller College in the spring, led the market analysis effort. 

“When looking at the technology, we identified potential customer segments that would benefit — namely, power plants, desalination plants, and data centers,” she says. “The value proposition for each market is different, but the overall recommendation to the researchers was to license the technology.”

The project hit home for Ezouah, a Ghana native born in one of the most water-stressed regions in the world. 

“Desalination is a really big thing — right now Ghana is having issues with fresh water because of over-mining.”

Scaling the Program  

Scheller College plans to offer the EAP as a three-credit course beginning this summer. The class, Technology Commercialization Practicum, will help scale the program more quickly across the Institute while also supporting Georgia Tech’s commitment to interdisciplinary collaboration.

Jonathan Giuliano, professor of the practice and executive director and academic director of TI:GER, says EAP students requested that the course be created since it could serve as “the perfect capstone to their TI:GER experience.”

It’s a win-win for both researchers and students, he added. “For researchers, the students’ market, industry, and strategy analysis can inform both research grant proposals and startup funding. The benefit to students is that they further develop their skills in how to turn inventions into innovations — an important and a rare skill set not only in early-stage ventures but also in corporate innovation.”

Story by: Anne Wainscott-Sargent

About Georgia Tech Office of Commercialization

Georgia Tech Commercialization is a cornerstone in transitioning the Institute's leading-edge research into real-world applications. It encompasses four pivotal units: CREATE-X, VentureLab, Quadrant-i, and Technology Licensing. These units empower students and faculty to launch startups, provide comprehensive commercialization support, manage intellectual property, and facilitate the transformation of research into viable businesses. Our mission is to provide world-class commercialization services, catalyzing research and innovation to improve the human condition and solidify Georgia Tech's position as a leader in technology and entrepreneurial impact.