Eleven innovators share their takeaways from the spring 2025 I-Corps program
For the first time in the program's regional history, the three-week cohort was conducted exclusively virtually.
On Wednesday afternoon, participants in the latest cohort of Innovation Corps (I-Corps) logged on one by one. For the first time in the program’s history, the innovators went through the three-week program completely virtually.
The idea to do so was pioneered by Marc Nabhan, the newly named Director of Entrepreneurship and New Ventures at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville (UTK). He was joined by Bryan Barringer, who is one of the instructors for this semester’s program.
In the first week, the eleven innovation teams learned the strategy for customer discovery. Understanding the desires, pain points, and opportunities from potential customers is the best way to ensure that an innovation will thrive when it gets to market. During the remaining weeks of the program, all eleven companies were tasked with reaching out to twenty potential customers or industry experts to understand the viability of their innovation in the marketplace.
In the final session on Wednesday, May 7, the eleven teams shared their findings. The participating companies included:
- cNTP
- TERRA
- PowerTechs
- TL Innovations
- KaMoZo Biologics
- NextGen Resilience
- Aquaman
- Brooks Band
- CK Innovation Creation
- LAMMON
- NanoGuard Solutions
The University of Tennessee, Knoxville (UTK) is a partnering institution in the Innovation Corps (I-Corps) Mid-South Hub. The regional I-Corps programs enable the transformation of invention to impact through an interactive training session that runs for three weeks, which includes three workshops, weekly office hours, and at least 20 customer interviews. Through I-Corps training, researchers can reduce the time to translate a promising idea from the laboratory to the marketplace.
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