What is I-Corps?

I-Corps was launched by the National Science Foundation in 2011 and has quickly become one of the world’s largest and most successful technology start-up accelerators.

In 2015 the White House included I-Corps in its Strategy for American Innovation and announced that the program would spread from NSF to all the major research funding agencies in the United States.

The NSF I-Corps network is comprised of 9 regional Nodes and 100 Sites. GW is a member of the DC I-Corps Node and the larger National Innovation Network. It is also an I-Corps Site.

As a core university in the DC I-Corps Node, GW hosts many regional and national I-Corps programs, and has also led many of the efforts to bring I-Corps, and other related entrepreneurial training programs based on I-Corps, to other countries around the world.

The I-Corps curriculum provides a real-world, hands-on, immersive learning experience in how to transform innovations into successful products and services.  The highly experiential program was developed by entrepreneurs and is taught by entrepreneurs (including Steve Blank, father of Lean Startup) and was featured in this Harvard Business Review cover story.

The GW I-Corps Site provides training in key elements of the lean startup approach and grants for up to $3,000 to teams of students or faculty who wish to explore the opportunities for commercializing their technologies.

"Going through I-Corps helped put my ideas through a stress test in a meaningful way. I don’t know if I would have started my company without it."

- Benjamin Holmes, CEO of Nanochon — who participated in both regional and national I-Corps programs as a Ph.D. student at GW.