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By Allan Maurer
In Atlanta, a number of successful startups have evolved from incubation at the Advanced Technology Development Center at Georgia Tech and the VentureLab. But a third program, an educational process as opposed to an incubator, is also shoving a new company out the door annually. It’s called TI:GER, or Technological Innovation Generating Economic Results.
AcclerEyes, winner of this year’s GRA/TAG business launch competition and profiled here recently, is a graduate of the program.
The interdisciplinary program founded at Georgia Tech School of Management in collaboration with Emory in 2002 brings together an MBA, a PhD, and two law students on teams to learn the process of commercializing technology, explains Margi Berbari, program director. The product they research revolves around the PhD student’s research at Georgia Tech.
Margi Berbari: TI:GER Program Director
The program fields an average of seven teams. Last year it graduated ten, this year 9 and the upcoming class has 7. “This year, we’re going to put two MBAs on a team,” says Berbari.
The program is funded by a $750,000 National Science Foundation grant aimed at unique interdisciplinary programs. It’s had two rounds of NSF funding, which is unusual, Berbari says. The NSF grants fund it through this semester.
“The purpose of the grants is to provide seed money, and the NSF wants the universities to find funding. Georgia Tech is funding it now at a lower level and we’re trying to supplement that with alumni donations.”
The teams learn how to protect their intellectual property, and develop marketing and business strategies. They are provided mentors and links to the Atlanta technology community.
Every team has a legal and a business mentor. “The mentors help them solve particular problems in their industry,” Berbari says.
Tenured faculty from Georgia Tech and Emory teach various modules. In the third semester, they do a project with the ATDC. In the fourth, they move on to a project with VentureLab. “We tell them they’re moving up the food chain. VentureLab is prenatal care, ATDC the incubator.”
Berbari herself, who worked with HotWire Marketing focused on solving problems for emerging and larger technology companies, says “I teach the pragmatic stuff. How to do presentations, get a competitive advantage, and things more on the practical side.”
That includes such things as telling them that “If they’re going to fail, fail fast.”
Syzygy: One company that has emerged from the TI:GER program.
A key lesson the teams learn, she says, are how to work with people who have completely different backgrounds than they do, to appreciate different mindsets and work together. “All their projects are done together,” she notes. “They form the teams in the first year and live with it for the two-year program.”
While she admits the program does not always have “100 percent functional teams,” she says “Even the dysfunctional ones walk away with good life lessons.”
She says learning to work together in teams is essential.
“The way this generation works, they do a lot of stuff online and tend to divide and conquer too much. Then when they put all the pieces together, it can lack cohesiveness.”
But, Berbari says, “They get it. They really do learn teamwork.”
“First,” says Berbari, “They figure out what industry they want to take the technology into. Then they determine their strategy. Do they want to license the technology and partner with a large company or do they want to actually create a product?”
Each year, Berbari notes, “One team in the class has legs and is able to bootstrap a company and take it on to something more the way AccelerEyes has taken it forward.”
Another company that came out of the program, called Syzygy, won second place in the Georgia Tech’s business plan competition this year for its plan to market shape-memory plastics that are capable of perfectly adapting to fit into a customer’s ears. This technology creates a personalized fit for earphones, wireless Bluetooth devices, and hearing aids, alleviating the common comfort problems associated with these devices.
Syzygy also won the Most Fundable Award (a service package worth $35,000 in legal, financial, and other services), which goes to the team deemed by judges to be most ready to enter the marketplace. The team’s members include Georgia Tech MBA student Brent Duncan, Georgia Tech mechanical and systems engineering PhD student Walter Voit, and Emory law students Justin Helsby and Rob MacKenna.
While TI:GER is successfully nudging new companies out the door, that’s not its only purpose, Berbari says. “The purpose is not so much to incubate companies as to teach these teams the process. We have graduates who take intrapreneurial positions. It’s more of a mindset we teach rather than evaluating it solely by the number of companies we form.”
In exit interviews, PhDs make comments like this: “It taught me to think completely differently about my research before taking a deep dive into research with no market application.”
And, “It allowed me to frame the technology problems to solve immediate market problems.”
So, Berbari says, “It’s more of an attitude adjustment.”
Online: http://tiger.gatech.edu
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