Wyoming boosts entrepreneurship drive

University of Wyoming yesterday revealed it is going to launch a new entrepreneurship coordination office called Institute of Innovation and Entrepreneurship (IIE) later in 2018 to further its five-year strategic plan.

IIE will exist alongside Wyoming’s tech transfer arm, Office of Research and Economic Development. The university hopes IIE will help drive its blueprint for 2017-2022, which calls for enhanced entrepreneurship schemes and more royalty-generating licences.

IIE will receive capital from Wyoming’s strategic initiative fund and is expected to submit a budget for the 2018-2019 fiscal year. Wyoming plans to recruit an entrepreneur-in-residence and will establish a campus location for the institute in summer 2018.

The new body will look to weave entrepreneurship across Wyoming’s academic curricula, while also delivering improvements to the standalone entrepreneurship course and creating a new minor course open to all non-entrepreneurship students.

IIE will appoint faculty members from each academic discipline to advocate innovation and entrepreneurship alongside their other responsibilities. Edmund Synakowski, the university’s vice-president for research and economic development, will sit on the governing board in addition to Wyoming’s academic deans.

The initiative will provide informal training activities and promote plans for a technology management master’s degree with Wyoming’s College of Business and the College of Engineering and Applied Science.

IIE will contain an incubator called Business Creation Factory aimed at assessing and de-risking entrepreneurial ideas through a three-stage venture creation process. Wyoming expects the incubator to create more viable startups capable of luring private-sector capital in the early stages.

Business Creation Factory will consider ideas based on faculty inventions as well as those spawned from business plan competitions, campus innovation hubs and the wider Wyoming startup ecosystem.