On Friday, the UW-Madison’s Discovery to Product program, which helps fund promising entrepreneurial projects in the hopes those ideas can later be marketed, announced a new batch of innovations to get that money.
Out of the 170 innovations it had to choose from, the Discovery to Product board selected 17, including an exercise machine that helps stroke victims walk and a game that teaches meditation.
“We would like to think we are choosing things that have good strong social value to them,” said John Biondi, an established entrepreneur who directs Discovery to Product, also called D2P. “We also look at the probability these will produce products or jobs in Wisconsin.”
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Biondi said the projects get money based on development milestones — for instance, achieving a licensing arrangement or becoming a start-up company with a good chance of getting funding after incorporation.
“These are projects that are coming out of faculty labs — in some cases out of dorm rooms — that have commercial potential, and we are going to help see if we can achieve that commercial potential,” said Biondi.
The expected turnaround from creation to commercialization is quick: D2P has only about a year to work with each project.
The money for the 17 projects comes from a $2.4 million Wisconsin Economic Development Incentive Grant.
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