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Turning ideas into inventions
"What if...?" These words characterize the earliest stage of invention-the very phase that The Deshpande Center seeks to benefit with its Ignition Grants.
Ignition Grants can help turn incipient ideas into viable
inventions. They enable faculty of MIT — together
with students, post-docs, and staff — to take risks and explore uncharted concepts, before they've developed proof of concept or gathered any data.
This funding — up to $50,000 per grant — targets projects focusing on novel, enabling, and potentially useful ideas in all areas of technology. Though it might enable only exploratory experiments and proof of concept, an Ignition Grant also might position projects to receive further funding, such as an Innovation Grant, to take a concept to full development.
Transforming inventions into salable innovations
Even once an idea has advanced to the "invention" stage, a number of scenarios can keep it from advancing further. Perhaps some intellectual property has been developed, but additional demonstration of success is required. Maybe one or more innovative companies have been identified as targets for the use of the technology, but help is needed to establish collaboration. Or maybe faculty needs to further solidify the intellectual property, to reduce the uncertainty associated with applying the technology to commercial needs.
Innovation Grants — for as much as $250,000 — can remove
obstacles like these and keep the innovation process on track and moving
forward. They're meant to benefit projects that have progressed beyond their
earliest stages — projects that have established proof of concept
and identified an R&D path and IP strategy. Ultimately, each grant will
help a project build a package to bring to venture capitalists or companies
that might invest in its technology.
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