About i-Teams

"Our team was like a small company, working together to achieve a common goal"

"i-Teams is one of the most entertaining and inspiring projects I have ever worked on. It has helped to reshape and direct my future career towards entrepreneurship"

General Info

i-Teams brings together highly qualified and motivated students with Cambridge-based research labs and the business community. The student teams assess the commercial feasibility of scientific and engineering breakthroughs. The research projects have been carefully selected from the CMI research portfolio, based on their commercial potential, either through licensing or via a future start-up. All CMI research projects have involved collaboration between researchers based at Cambridge University and MIT, and have focused on research with clear commercial potential.

i-Teams is based on the successful program run at MIT since 2004. MIT's i-teams program has resulted in two spinout companies and numerous finalists and semi-finalists in the MIT $50K Entrepreneurship Competition.

Each team is expected to research and create a go-to-market strategy for a new technology developed jointly by the University of Cambridge and MIT. Different possible target markets for the invention are assessed and compared, as are different market approaches. The teams are guided by the labs' Principal Investigators, CMI’s Entrepreneur-in-Residence and mentors from the local business community. After the completion of the market strategy, some projects may move on to later steps, such as developing a business plan to be submitted to the Cambridge University Entrepreneurs Business Creation Competitions in 2007-8. Team members are expected to be entrepreneurial and motivated self-starters, as the team is critical to the success of the project. The exact work required is flexible so that it can meet the needs of each innovation.

i-teams will meet fortnightly, to present their results so far to the other teams, and to discuss roadblocks and difficulties. Additional individual mentoring will also be available from Amy Mokady, CMI Entrepreneur-in-Residence, and from local businesspeople from relevant industries.

i-teams will be expected to review and challenge their own conclusions during the course of the term, to ensure that the final recommendations are robust. In addition, team members will need to discuss the technologies with real target customers in relevant industries, to ensure that real-world feedback drives the conclusions.

Projects

Overview

i-Teams allows entrepreneurial post-graduate students to work with real inventions to determine the best route for their commercialization, and present the results at CUTEC's annual Technology Ventures Conference.

Each i-Team will consist of 4 to 7 students from different disciplines and experience, and will work with a nominated research project selected from several University departments. The i-Team assesses the commercial prospects of scientific and engineering breakthroughs emerging from Cambridge University labs. The teams are guided by the labs' Principal Investigators, CMI's Entrepreneur-in-idence (Amy Mokady), and mentors from the local business community. Together we will identify suitable product markets, and define ions for future technology development, helping to drive the use of lab research in real-world applications.

Identifying the best path for commercializing a breakthrough technology is an iterative process, so the program is designed with many small checkpoints. We expect that you will put forth hypotheses, test them, then go back and revise them based on customer input or other validations. At several points during the term, teams will have the opportunity to present snapshots of their progress, to get feedback from the other teams. At each step, the entire group will have the opportunity to review and challenge your hypothesis and onclusions, helping to ensure that the final report represents a well-justified analysis of the technology's commercial potential.

i-Teams Goal

The goal of i-Teams is to explore, identify and analyze the commercial potential for your team's emerging, breakthrough technology. At the end of the term, your team will have identified the market(s) and application(s) with the most potential. Iteam's also tirely acceptable for your team to come to a well-researched conclusion that there is no attractive market for the technology.

A key part of the i-Teams project involves finding contacts in relevant industries to gather real-world feedback on ideas for applications for the technology. This will build and extend your existing network of contacts, as well as helping you to op hands-on experience in talking to new people with a range of different backgrounds about your project. You will also gain experience n working in a team of people with different skills and experience to yourself.

Your final report will provide an overview of the competition, the most appropriate business model, and the next steps or moving forward. This analysis will be presented in the form of a power point presentation along with supporting materials, which serve as the starting point for a subsequent team to develop a business plan or licensing program.

Each team will make a presentation of their findings to a broader audience at the end of the Lent term, and will have e opportunity to present their conclusions at the CUTEC conference in June 2008.

Deliverables

Initial Presentation: At the end of the first class, each team will make an informal erbal presentation to the other teams, introducing themselves and summarizing their project.

Customer Interviews and Analysis: Perhaps the most critical aspect of the project will be tifying the market(s) that hold the most potential for the technology. To that end, contacting and interviewing potential customers in at market to determine their level of need for/interest in the product is critical. Each team will be expected to conduct a minimum of 10 customer interviews, which will be summarized in an appendix of the final report.

Update Presentations: At each i-Teams class, teams will update the group on their progress so ar, including:

Important or interesting findings (from market analysis or customer feedback)
Findings of direct relevance to the technology, eg key needs for a particular market as relayed by a customer
Findings of more general applicability
Any roadblocks or hurdles that need to be resolved

These updates should be 10-15 minutes long only, and can be verbal or use some powerpoint, whichever makes it easiest to communicate to the other teams.

Final Presentation: The final presentation should be designed for an audience with no prior osure to the technology. It will need to be short and to-the-point, covering in 20 minutes the following key aspects:

Brief introduction to the technology and its key differentiators
Review of markets analyzed
Summary of results from different markets
Recommendations on next steps

Each presentation will be followed by Q&A to defend the conclusions reached.