University Builds Path for Student Inventors

Every year, thousands of K–12 students develop inventions aimed at solving real-world problems. Few, however, have the resources, business expertise or financial backing to bring those ideas to market.

Seeking to create a pathway from invention to commercialization, the University of New Haven has recently partnered with the nonprofits FORGE and NextMinds to launch Connecticut Invents, a program designed to help young innovators develop their ideas into viable products and businesses.

Paul Lavoie, vice president of innovation and applied technology at the university, said the partnership was created to address a recurring challenge: Promising student inventions often lack a clear path to market.

“The problem that we were solving was that we had these brilliant inventions that were never commercialized because there was no path to commercialization,” Lavoie said. “How do we take these young kids who invent something that’s pretty cool and commercialize it, but then also provide a future for these students by giving them a four-year education and giving them an equity position in their own product and in the company that we create from their product?”

The program: Selected student inventors will receive a tuition-free undergraduate education at the University of New Haven. The university will also oversee intellectual property protection, legal support and business development efforts related to students’ inventions.

FORGE, which helps innovators with physical products navigate the journey from prototype to commercialization, will provide guidance on product development and manufacturing, while the New England incubator NextMinds will identify promising inventors through its flagship Invention Convention program, which reaches more than 10,000 K–12 students annually.

Lavoie said the program will begin by reaching out to past Invention Convention participants whose inventions may be ready for commercialization. Applications for the university’s Connecticut Invents scholarship will open this fall for the following academic year.

An independent board comprising representatives from FORGE, NextMinds, the University of New Haven and industry partners will evaluate inventions and their market potential when selecting students for the program, he said.

“We want to get as many diverse opinions to look at these things and to be able to make recommendations,” Lavoie said. “We’ll look at anything that a VC firm would look at, or a private equity firm would look at, if they’re going to invest in a patent or a company to determine the viability of it.”

Lavoie said the model differs from many traditional incubators because it combines entrepreneurship support with a college education.

“There’s incubators all over the place that anybody can bring an invention to, but it doesn’t bring in the getting-a-college-degree-while-you’re-building-your-company kind of element to it,” he said.

Supporting young inventors: Lavoie said the program will give students the opportunity to discover what roles they want to play within companies formed around their inventions.

“The role is really going to depend on what they’re really good at,” Lavoie said. “Maybe they serve as the chief financial officer of the organization while they’re in college, maybe they decide they want to be an engineer, then maybe they’re the chief technical officer.”

As the program develops, Lavoie said the university will track outcomes including the number and type of companies launched, the revenue generated and the success of student entrepreneurs after graduation. However, he emphasized that young inventors are not expected to navigate the start-up process alone.

“What we do know, though, is they don’t have the capacity to do the whole thing. They don’t have the capacity to run a business, they don’t have the capacity to bring it to market,” Lavoie said. “We need to surround them with the people that are going to be able to do that, and the university will be able to do that through our staff, our faculty and our executive-in-residence program.”

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