By: Deborah Johnson Wood
Last week, InnovationWorks (IW) unveiled its cutting-edge Idea Portal, a virtual clearinghouse for inventors, investors, entrepreneurs, manufacturers, patent attorneys, design engineers and other professionals looking to advance innovation in West Michigan through an accelerated commercialization process.
IW, funded by a portion of a $15 million federal grant from the WIRED West Michigan initiative, created the Idea Portal as a central repository that uses Microsoft SharePoint technology to link intellectual property from inventors and companies with entrepreneurs, investors, and manufacturers looking for new business opportunities.
All with the goals of getting innovative new ideas into production and to market faster, and to share best practices, determine needs, and connect the region's top companies to co-develop new ideas.
"Inventors go to the web site and submit some basic information and an InnovationWORKS coach will contact them," says Jim Ross, IW executive director and VP of innovation and technical services for The Right Place, Inc., the host organization for IW.
"The coaches help the applicants make sure they have patent protection and can describe their highly technical ideas in terms potential investors can understand—all before the idea is loaded on the portal."
When the Idea Portal was unveiled on February 18, there were 50 entries. Within three days, the coaches had received another 87 requests to sign up.
On the flip side, IW is working to get manufacturers, investors, and entrepreneurs and their key employees using the site.
Ross emphasizes that IW doesn't provide any funding for development, but gives innovation leaders an opportunity to bring their ideas to the place where funding might be found.
Source: Jim Ross, InnovationWorks
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Deborah Johnson Wood is development news editor for Rapid Growth Media. She can be contacted at [email protected].
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