Brent Clark, PhD, a business professor at UNO and the Omaha site director for the National Science Foundation I-Corps Great Plains Region., address the gathering during a brief presentation at UNeMed’s Idea Pub: Morning Edition, on Thursday July 25, 2024.
OMAHA, Nebraska (July 31, 2024)—UNeMed’s “Idea Pub: Morning Edition” focused on customer discovery during its fourth monthly meeting last week.
Morning Edition featured several speakers, highlighted by short talks from Brent Clark, PhD, and Stephanie Kidd, PhD.
Dr. Clark is a business professor at UNO and the Omaha site director for the National Science Foundation I-Corps Great Plains Region. Dr. Kidd is the communications strategist at UNeTech Institute, lead instructor for the NSF I-Corps Great Plains Region, and Director of Opportunity Corps.
In addition to customer discovery services, Dr. Clark described I-Corps as a place for feedback to help refine concepts, strategies and innovations.
“We’re not an incubator,” he said, “we’re not an accelerator. We’re more of an idea tester.”
Dr. Kidd also discussed her role within I-Corps and UneTech as Director of Opportunity Corps, which she helped create so that a wider spectrum of people could access entrepreneurial services.
“We’re really interested in supporting any group that faces a barrier to entry,” she said, noting that as an instructor for I-Corps she realized that people of color, women and other marginalized groups don’t often have the same access to services or support.
“I found that it took time to build success and wealth,” she said. “Too long. So I thought, how to change that?”
Opportunity Corps was the result.
Dr. Kidd introduced one of Opportunity Corps’ graduates, Shield Fields, the entrepreneur behind a startup built around a UNMC innovation called automated antibiogram. The automated antibiogram technology is a software platform that hospitals and clinics can use to help manage and treat infections with antibiotics.
Stephanie Kidd, PhD, the communications strategist at UNeTech Institute, lead instructor for the NSF I-Corps Great Plains Region, and Director of Opportunity Corps, during UNeMed’s July 25, 2024, Idea Pub: Morning Edition.
UNeMed, the technology transfer and commercialization office for UNMC and UNO, sponsored the event, which will continue as a regular monthly series. The series will continue to feature guest speakers from the entrepreneurial ecosystem; and will provide UNMC and UNO innovators an opportunity to build new partnerships and allies that can help develop their innovative ideas and discoveries into products that help people.
The next Morning Edition is planned for Thursday, August 29, at 9-11 a.m. in the DRC II commons. The featured speaker has not yet been announced.
Morning Edition will continue on the last Thursday of every month, featuring a new speaker each time. Each Morning Edition will also feature “Office Hours,” with MOVE and UNeMed. Office Hours creates the opportunity for faculty, students and staff to have one-on-one time with MOVE or UNeMed professionals to discuss new technologies or startup potential.
Additional planned speakers in the coming months include:
- Ben Kuspa, Nebraska Department of Economic Development: Securing state matching funds & prototyping grants
- Ben Walker, Innosphere: How you can benefit from a life sciences incubator program
- Scott Henderson, NMotion: When should you apply to the NMotion accelerator?
- Ben Williamson, Invest Nebraska: What are VCs looking for?
- Stephen Hug, UNeTech: Adventures in faculty/entrepreneur matchmaking
