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Today's post is a guest entry by the Renewable and Sustainable Energy Institute's Director of Entrepreneurship and Business Development, Trent Yang. Thank you, Trent!

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Of all the services that that the Deming Center provides to CU Boulder's faculty and students, one of its most important roles is to foster the understanding, education, and promotion of entrepreneurship across all industry sectors.   Nowhere is this connection stronger than through CU's Renewable and Sustainable Energy Institute (RASEI), a year-old joint institute between CU and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL).

As an early advisor and architect of the energy institute, the Deming Center played a significant role in not only identifying entrepreneurship and industry relationships as a critical part of the energy institute, but has actively guided the creation of both an incubation process and a thriving industry partnership program within the Institute.  This relationship was cemented when RASEI decided to hire a full time director of Entrepreneurship and Business Development to oversee and build upon the solid foundation that had been created.

I was fortunate enough to have met Paul Jerde two years ago, at a time when the Deming Center was just starting to become involved in RASEI's formation.  And one year ago, I moved back from Boston to my home town of Boulder, CO to be the director of entrepreneurship and business development at RASEI.

Since I joined the team--the blink of an eye it seems--one of the more exciting activities that we created for RASEI was the standardization of an incubation process that brings together entrepreneurs, industry experts, business & science students, as well as the faculty.

In conjunction with the Deming Center and our innovative & successful Technology Transfer Office (TTO), we created the Market Assessment Program (MAP) in conjunction with our existing Proof of Concept (POC) program. 

MAP brought together a team comprising of a industry lead, 1-2 MBA student and the PhD/Post-Doc researcher to spend three months to answer the following questions about a particular technology:  

(1) Is this technology commercialization?

(2) If so, how would you commercialize it (start-up, licensing, partnership, etc)?  and

(3) What are the biggest barriers and risks for the selected commercialization pathway?  

The program was an instant success with 12 applicants, and 7 selected projects that span  six different industries, including such topics as distributed hydrogen production to hybrid airplanes. 

On May 4^th, we showcased the findings of our 7 projects at the little-known, but wonderfully managed, CU's Natural History Museum (highly recommended).   We set up our event amongst all the old fossils of their main display hall, which made for a dramatic contrast between new opportunities and ancient history.

The Daily Camera published a great article summarizing the event and the presentations; I won't repeat the details here, but we will post public documents of our projects at our Web site. Out of this process will grow one or two start-ups as well as proof-of-concept funding.  For technologies that were identified as too early for commercialization, we have worked with the faculty members to identify pathways that are most relevant for market adoption and opportunity.

This was an incredible process that brought together some of the best entrepreneurial talents in the community to work with the best technologies coming out of CU and RASEI.  To those of you who are interested in participating, please contact me directly at Trent (dot) Yang (at) Colorado (dot) edu. I also suggest getting involved with the Boulder Innovation Center (BIC,) with whom we work closely to identify industry leads for all of our projects.

Five years ago, a group of us, including C.O.R.E and the Deming Center for Entrepreneurship, converged around a vision for an event that would enable businesses of all types to showcase opportunities that they were finding from the drivers of sustainability.  From that first discussion sprang the annual Sustainable Opportunities Summit (SOS). 

At that time (ca. 2005) many of the companies in attendance could legitimately be considered as first movers.  It was a remarkable event - violating almost all of the rules of focus and specialization.  Participating companies came from every sector of the business world.  As one attendee commented, "I admit to being a serial conference attendee, but I was very skeptical about SOS.  What I now realize is that I attend conferences on the same topics with the same speakers and the same attendees.  But this (SOS) was one of the most thought provoking and refreshing experiences that I've had.  It is clear that sustainability is a whole new way to think about how to create and run businesses, and is unquestionably the way of business in the future.  This conference is an incredible forum at which to learn more and to better understand where the trends will lead us."

In 2009 the City of Denver became a partner - recognizing that the success of the summit had created a powerful platform for the city, the university, and the business community at which to showcase the extraordinary advances being made by companies, cities and schools pertaining to sustainability.  Colorado has emerged as one of the most successful regions of sustainable business leadership, cleantech and renewable energy, organic foods and products, and progressive public/private collaborations around business, government, the environment, water and energy. 

Please join us for the 5^th annual Sustainable Opportunities Summit and Cleantech Venture Challenge. This year's Summit will take place next week, from March 2^nd to the 4^th at the Denver Convention Center.  Once again you will hear from and be able to network with remarkable thought leaders . Join us or learn more here.