Dear Friend of the Deshpande Center,

We plan to keep MIT entrepreneurs busy in the new year! We are currently planning our annual IdeaStream symposium for April 8, and there are more events in the works. In the meantime, we recommend a few entrepreneurship courses this month, tell you about an unusual project on steelmaking, and remind you to start thinking about possible project ideas for our pre-proposal deadline in April. We also congratulate one of our grant recipients for winning two prizes and our faculty director, who successfully summitted a 7,000-meter peak in Nepal (photo included!)

Best wishes for a peaceful and happy New Year!

Krisztina Holly
Executive Director

Contents

• January Seminars on Entrepreneurship
• Innovation Showcases at IdeaStream 2004 on April 8
• Ignition Forum White Papers Now On-line
• Tips for Technology Licensing
• Project Profile: Sadoway’s Radical Steelmaking Method
• Next Call for Proposals Coming Up
• Cooney Summits Nepal’s Ama Dablam
• Langer Wins Two Big Prizes in One Day

January Seminars on Entrepreneurship

We encourage the MIT community to engage in Independent Activities Period (IAP) courses and seminars that will be offered throughout January. This is a wonderful opportunity to dabble in new things and to learn from experts about something you may not otherwise find the time to learn on your own.

The following seminars are especially relevant to entrepreneurship and technology commercialization, and most start this coming week:

• 15.975 The Nuts and Bolts of Business Plans by Joe Hadzima - The original business plan course at MIT! Geared towards putting together the preliminary executive summary for the $50k competition. (for credit)
• 15.976 Starting and Building a Successful Technology-Based Company by Bill Aulet and Mike Grandinetti - How to turn a start-up into a viable business. (for credit)
• High Tech Startups by Jack Gill - An entrepreneurship course geared primarily towards science and engineering students.
• 11.180 Social Entrepreneurship and its Role in Society by Karl Seidman and Andrew Wolk - how to effectively start and build organizations and initiatives whose primary purpose is systematic social change. (for credit)

Please note that eligibility varies; many require registration or are only open to the MIT community, and some may already be full, so please check the websites or with the instructor for details.

Innovation Showcases at IdeaStream 2004 on April 8

Do you have an innovative MIT technology or invention that you think would make a good business? Do you want to share it with a targeted audience of successful entrepreneurs, top venture capitalists, MIT students, and faculty? If so, the Deshpande Center for Technological Innovation wants you to pitch us your idea for an opportunity to participate in IdeaStream 2004. This exclusive event will take place April 8, 2004 at the Cambridge Hyatt.

Applications must be submitted by an MIT faculty member, research staff, or student for a technology-based idea conceived while doing research at MIT. We do not require a full business plan; however, the more thought-out the business model and more advanced the proof of concept, the more likely the idea will be selected. More information and an application form will be posted at the end of January.

More information is available on our new IdeaStream 2004 website. IdeaStream is the Deshpande Center’s annual, invitation-only symposium on leading-edge innovation. We will be continually updating the IdeaStream website with agenda, sponsorship, and venue information. Invitations to the event will be sent in late February.

Ignition Forum White Papers Now On-line

On December 11, 2003, the Deshpande Center wrapped up a successful season of Ignition Forums with a panel discussion on bioMEMS. Ignition Forums bring together members of the business community and entrepreneurial-minded MIT faculty and students to spark new ideas in a particular technology or industry area.

At the December forum, two bioMEMS entrepreneurs, a venture capitalist, and about 60 MIT faculty and students discussed everything from just how “bio” MEMS might get in the future to whether or not they should be disposable. Other topics in the past year have included data security, post-genomic challenges in pharma, portable energy, and ultra-wideband wireless. To view an archive of white papers from these sessions, go to our Ignition Forum web page.

Tips for Technology Licensing

We learned from surveying MIT faculty recently that there is a strong demand for advice on working with MIT’s Technology License Office (TLO) and increasing the chances of licensing success ... so we invited the TLO’s director, Lita Nelsen, to be the featured guest at our December 18 Faculty Entrepreneurship Workshop.

Nelsen’s presentation offered a wealth of information and advice for faculty wishing to license inventions. For example, she explained the whole TLO process, from how they decide whether to patent an invention to how licenses are negotiate. Nelsen also gave an overview of how technologies can be most effectively commercialized through startups, and she highlighted the value of venture capitalists in the process. She explained the resources that the TLO provides – and what the TLO does not provide. Attendees discussed their own licensing and start-up stories in a follow-up Q&A session.

Even though Chiping Chen, principal research scientist at the Plasma Science and Fusion Center, has worked with the TLO on several patent applications and subsequent start-ups, he found the workshop enlightening. “The TLO statistics showing that a majority patents are licensed to small companies were very interesting to me, because it reinforces the notion that small companies are more innovative than big companies. Such information will be useful as we develop the strategies on how to commercialize our inventions.” In fact, an impressive 25% of MIT licenses go to startups, and a full 70% of the inventions are typically licensed to small companies.

You can view the presentation on-line.

Project Profile: Sadoway’s Radical Steelmaking Method

Rivaled only by transportation as a source of carbon emissions, the steel industry leaves a large footprint on the environment. Materials Science and Engineering Professor Donald Sadoway is exploring a radical alternative to carbon-based steel production: zapping molten iron oxide with an electrical current to produce highly pure, carbon-free iron.

Sadoway received an Innovation Grant in late 2003 to further develop his method. Called electrolytic steelmaking, it would not only clean up the steel industry – it would also produce a harmless, but marketable, by-product: oxygen.

Historically, the steel industry has avoided pursuing disruptive new technologies. But with talk in Europe of a tax on carbon that would double the cost of many steels, the idea of electrolytic steelmaking sounds less far-fetched. In fact, a working group formed by the American Iron and Steel Institute is already examining prospective carbon-free extraction technologies.

“The Deshpande Center is doing something fresh here,” said Sadoway. The Center recognized that while Sadoway’s work doesn’t answer an immediate need, it has the long-term potential to revolutionize the steel industry and take control of a worldwide market worth $200 billion.

Next Call for Proposals Coming Up

As we review the nearly 40 proposals that have been submitted for our next round of grants, we’d like to remind you that our next call for proposals will take place in March, shortly after we announce the latest grant recipients. The next submission date is scheduled for April 14, so start thinking about any ideas that may be appropriate for Deshpande Center support. For more information about the grant program and for a pre-proposal template, see our grant program web page.

Cooney Summits Ama Dablam

The Deshpande Center's Faculty Director, Prof. Charles Cooney, ended the year nearly on top of the world. Cooney, along with son Matt, climbed Ama Dablam, a 7,000-meter peak in Nepal’s Kuhmbu region roughly 10 miles from Everest.

Charlie (r) and son Matt atop Ama Dablam. Mount Everest is in the left background.

Langer Wins Two Big Prizes in One Day

MIT Professor of Chemical and Biomedical Engineering Robert Langer, whose project in tissue engineering received a Deshpande Center Innovation Grant last year, is known to many as a prolific inventor and entrepreneur. In fact, his MIT laboratory is the largest biomedical engineering lab in the world. In December 2003, Langer received two prestigious awards: the $250,000 Heinz Award for Technology, the Economy and Employment and the $75,000 Harvey Prize. He won the awards on the same day. Stay tuned for a project profile on Langer in an upcoming issue of the Deshpande Center newsletter. Congratulations!

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