IPO sponsors and/or manages programs to enhance the entrepreneurial skills of the LLNL workforce to spur innovation and seed commercialization of LLNL intellectual assets.

National Labs Entrepreneurship Academy 

Since 2015, LLNL’s IPO has partnered with the University of California at Davis Graduate School of Business Institute for Innovation and Entrepreneurship to host yearly academies teaching LLNL and Sandia National Laboratory (Sandia-California) scientists and engineers (S&Es) the fundamentals of entrepreneurial business. The intensive commercialization program allows S&Es to engage and grow through discussions and teamwork—and learn to grow a network to move technology through the Research, Design, Development & Demonstration (RDD&D) continuum toward commercialization.

Energy I-Corps 

Established in 2015, DOE’s Energy-I-Corps pairs teams of researchers with industry mentors to train researchers in moving technologies toward commercialization. LLNL was one of the initial national laboratories to pilot the Energy I-Corps program. Researcher participants go through an intensive two-month training in which they define technology value propositions, conduct customer discovery interviews, and develop viable market pathways for their technologies. Researchers return to LLNL with a framework for industry engagement to guide future research and inform a culture of market awareness.

FedTech

FedTech is a D.C.-based startup studio and accelerator that builds startups around deep technology from federal laboratories, universities, and corporations. In the past, IPO worked with FedTech to match Laboratory technologies with FedTech-recruited entrepreneurs. LLNL researchers spent eight weeks sharing the benefits of their technology and the entrepreneurs develop business models and pitches.