NIN Joins Founding Coalition Behind New National Innovation Initiative
The NSF National Innovation Network (NIN), powered by the 13 NSF I-Corps Hubs, is proud to join the founding coalition supporting a new five-year national initiative announced by the National Academy of Inventors (NAI) and the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) to strengthen America's innovation ecosystem. Formed through a Joint Partnership Agreement between NAI and USPTO, the initiative launches three coordinated efforts: the American Innovation Campaign, the National Invention Ambassadors Network, and Innovation and Economic Competitiveness Workshops. All three are designed to unite research, intellectual property, entrepreneurship, technology transfer, and workforce development under a shared national strategy.
NIN joins the Association of American Universities (AAU), AUTM, the Council for Innovation Promotion (C4IP), Command Strategies, the United States Intellectual Property Alliance (USIPA), and VentureWell as founding members of the coalition, which brings together many of the nation's leading voices in research, commercialization, entrepreneurship, and innovation policy.
The initiative arrives as the nation marks its 250th anniversary, with NAI and USPTO framing the effort as part of a broader vision for America's next era of innovation leadership. NIN's 13 I-Corps Hubs presently span 48 states, each built as a regional alliance of at least eight universities working to give technical researchers and community inventors the training and pathways to explore the commercial potential of their discoveries and innovations. Joining this coalition extends that mission by connecting NIN's Hub network with a broader national effort to strengthen intellectual property education and accelerate commercialization.
"Two hundred and fifty years ago, thirteen American colonies came together to transform the future of a nation, and it's no accident that two hundred and fifty years later, it's happening again," said Charleson Bell, Mid-South I-Corps Hub Director and National Chair of the NSF I-Corps National Innovation Network. "Instead of the thirteen colonies, it's the thirteen NSF I-Corps Hubs of the NSF National Innovation Network, working across more than 130 institutions to transform innovators into entrepreneurs. We take deep technologies and bring them into society, building prosperity here at home while keeping America competitive on the global stage."
About NIN
The National Innovation Network (NIN) is the nationwide network of NSF I-Corps Hubs, universities, NSF-funded researchers, entrepreneurs, and regional entrepreneurial communities working together to translate federally funded research into solutions that benefit society. Established as the operational backbone of the NSF I-Corps program, each I-Corps Hub delivers a standardized curriculum of experiential entrepreneurial training to researchers across all fields of science and engineering, helping them investigate the commercial potential of their work and move it toward the marketplace. NIN's Hubs work collaboratively to build and sustain an integrated innovation ecosystem across the country. The personnel that operate the NSF I-Corps Hubs have been operating regional I-Corps programs for over a decade and have supported deep technology inventors and innovators, generating billions of dollars of economic impact while multiplying federal taxpayer investments ~100x for every dollar invested. Recently, the 13 NSF I-Corps Hubs are accelerating their efforts, forming a fundamental national innovation infrastructure to provide countrywide commercialization support — the “engine block” of the American innovation engine.