A lack of steady collaboration between academia and business means unproven ideas don't often advance beyond the drawing board.
A new center at one of the nation's top universities will attempt to bridge the gap between research and commercialization.
This week, MIT launched the Deshpande Center for Technological Innovation to serve as catalyst for innovation and entrepreneurship.
Financed by a $20 million gift from Sycamore Networks co-founder Desh Deshpande and his wife Jaishree, the center will allow MIT researchers and students to explore new technology with local entrepreneurs and venture capitalists who might not otherwise have the opportunity to collaborate with MIT.
Over the next five years, the center will award more than $15 million in grants directly to MIT research.
MIT has an annual commitment of $750 million in sponsored research. The university churns out 400 to 450 new inventions, 100 licenses and approximately 25 startups each year.
But the center's impact on technological innovation could reach far beyond MIT's walls.
"We've identified a gap between early-stage ideas and a point at which small companies and venture capitalists would be willing to invest in commercialization and further-stage development of technology," said Charles Cooney, a chemical and biochemical engineering professor at MIT.
Directors hope the center will help drive the local economy by allowing researchers to develop innovations faster, spin out companies and license technology to the community, Cooney said.
"We didn't want to put money into incremental improvement," Cooney said. "But rather, we wanted to give a chance to ideas that would enable something that was greater ... to create a broad portfolio of emerging technologies."
"In lean economic times, there's more of an opportunity to make an impact," said executive director Krisztina Holly. "We believe that disruptive technologies are the ones that will succeed."
The center supports such emerging technologies as biotechnology, nanotechnology, information technology, new materials, energy and environmental innovation.
The Deshpande Center offers two types of funding: ignition grants and innovation grants.
Ignition grants provide seed funding of up to $50,000 for projects in early, conceptual stages. These grants can help catapult risky, incipient technological ideas into viable inventions by allowing MIT faculty and students to take risks and explore uncharted concepts before they've developed proof of concept or gathered any data.
Innovation grants award as much as $250,000 to projects that have progressed beyond the conceptual stage, established proof of concept, and identified an R&D path and intellectual property strategy.
The center recently awarded nine grants selected from 47 proposals, including five ignition grants and four innovation grants, totaling $1.25 million.
Projects selected in the first round include high-speed 3-D imaging, tissue engineering, protein detection and a new technology for software debugging.
If successful, these projects could have huge implications for researchers and the public. The active joint brace for assisted motion, for example, could allow millions of people suffering from strokes, Parkinson's disease and other neuromuscular disorders to stay independent longer and rehabilitate faster.
"We believe the model we're developing is quite unique, to have available university funds to invest in emerging technologies to meet market needs," Cooney said.
The project will bring in mentors, partners and speakers from the business community to interact with entrepreneurs on MIT's campus.
"We're hoping that by bringing the business community in earlier, we'll set this program up for success," Holly said.
While project directors admit that some ideas will fail, they insist that the center will help early-stage research advance beyond the lab.
"The biggest obstacle is the uncertainty associated with the new idea," Cooney said. "This (center) will fund research that establishes the intellectual property and research results that subsequent levels of investors will want to see."
That's good news for a new generation of innovators who are waiting to gain financial support for their ideas.
"We believe that this is a new opportunity to establish a new paradigm for funding," Cooney said.
