Watch this space: there is going to be a string of good news coming for the UNeTech Institute. I am sure anyone diligent enough to follow the link back to this post already knows some of it but I’m quite confident very few people know all of it.
In 2024, I mean for that to change.
When Rod Markin, M.D. PhD, Director of the UNeTech Institute and Assoc. Vice Chancellor for Business Development at the University of Nebraska Medical Center, serial inventor, and venture capitalist, asked me to help him found the UNeTech institute, I would have been gobsmacked if you told me all that we accomplished in a few short years. Much of the news we will report in the coming weeks will be the proof in the pudding of that statement.
It’s incredibly fulfilling to witness the success of an alternative approach to fostering entrepreneurship, facilitating technology transfer, and driving economic development. Of course, that doesn’t come from me or from Dr. Markin.
UNeTech is a team of dedicated professionals with diverse backgrounds and together we’ve found a new way to support the launch of technology startups. At the University of Nebraska Medical Center, like many other academic institutions, promising ideas fail to mature to their full potential. Those that succeed seem to do so arbitrarily or even randomly. Where UNeTech has been successful is in supporting the resilience of startups to survive. The new idea is fragile beyond belief. It can die for a million reasons that you know about and millions more that you’ll never see coming. Bringing a brand-new idea to market felt like a schoolyard egg race, on a gravel road, in the rain, and next to an erupting volcano.
I think we need to seriously consider how the innovation economy works – especially now. Biotechnology is producing a new era of miracles. Serious people are discussing harnessing nuclear fusion to create more green power than the world could ever need. We are all a bit unsettled by generative AI and what it means for our relationship with technology… and ourselves.
For all that innovation and discovery, the process by which new companies start, entrepreneurs grow, and investors fund startup launches still leaves too many good ideas to die on the vine. It still feels too much like winning the lottery. Yes, the startup company is a private asset, and yes, the entrepreneurs that start it will benefit enormously from it if it should succeed. But the life and death of startups also has a public benefit. Startup companies, especially technology companies, have an enormous impact on the jobs we do, the products we buy, and the economy we make.
It was a task that was beyond me, and I am so enormously proud of the team here at the UNeTech Institute. Together, we are forging a new, narrow, and uncharted path forward to connect the university invention to the trained entrepreneur and support them until they’re on their feet. It is a simple mandate that’s filled with thousands of little details and millions of little dilemmas. It takes more than UNeTech to support those ideas: from our inventors at the University of Nebraska to our sister office at UNeMed. From across town at Metro Community College to across the country at the Economic Development Administration – it truly has taken a village to tell the stories I have been dying to tell.
Watch this space – it’s going to be interesting.
