The Impact of I-Corps on Accelerating Venture Discontinuation in a Southeastern US University

Abstract

This study contributes to the literature on accelerators which focuses on private sector accelerators by providing an analysis of an accelerator in the public sphere that works with early-stage, science-driven applications, the National Science Foundation's Innovation-Corps (I-Corps) program. The methodology is based on a comparison of the ability of the services delivered through the I-Corps program to teams at the Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech) to speed their venture project discontinuation decisions over and above those of researchers receiving baseline commercialization services only. We find modest evidence that the I-Corps program helped Georgia Tech I-Corps teams make faster decisions to discontinue venture projects. The total savings of quicker I-Corps project discontinuation are estimated at more than $3.6 million over the 8-year observation period.