Requirements

• Time will be needed to determine who to talk with, and to schedule and conduct the interviews.
• Open-mindedness about your product/technology and your potential customers (what you find during the customer discovery process may change a lot) is key
• Understanding that customer discovery is best accomplished through asking questions, not talking about your product/technology. We know you want to tell the world about your creation and what problems it solves, but to get the best feedback about the potential market, you will need to limit what you reveal to the people you interview. 

Benefits

• Understanding basics of the business model canvas
• Learning best practices for customer discovery
• Developing a value proposition
• Defining customer segments
• Analyzing lessons learned
• Entrepreneurial Leads (often postdocs and grad students) have the opportunity to network with industry experts during the course of doing customer discovery

Key Terms

• I-Corps – I-Corps employs the scientific method to help researchers discover whether or not there is a market for their product or technology. Pronounced “eye core.”
• Technical lead (TL) – Typically a faculty member who is the technology inventor and serves as principal investigator, or a postdoctoral researcher who has deep expertise in the core technology
• Entrepreneurial lead (EL) – Typically a graduate student or postdoctoral researcher who leads the team and is committed to commercialization
• Industry mentor (IM) – An industry expert with business/entrepreneurial experience who is independent from the technology development and team. You won’t need one to participate in Discovery, but you will be required to have one if you want to apply to participate in the National I-Corps program. 
• Customer discovery – The process of hypothesizing who your market is and what their needs are, interviewing some of those potential customers, and redefining what the market and the needs are based on conversations with potential customers
• Entrepreneur in Residence (EIR) – Entrepreneurs who have started, raised funding for, and successfully exited companies. These individuals bring valuable experience, networks, and knowledge to the I-Corps program, the follow-on work to the program and overall business and domain expertise.   
• Instructor – The person who provides curriculum content and feedback to I-Corps participants, generally someone with an advanced degree who has knowledge of research, commercialization of technology and Lean Launchpad
• Customers – People you will interview to discover more about the market, also referred to as interviewees (you will not be “selling” your product or technology to them)
• Team – Consists of one to four people. Individuals can act as teams for the purpose of our regional program. This simply means that you will not have others to share responsibilities. If you decide to participate in the NSF’s National I-Corps Program, teams will need to consist of at least three people, with one person in each of the following roles – technical lead, entrepreneurial lead and industry mentor.
• Office Hours – Individualized time for teams to meet with our instructors or EIRs to ask questions, get feedback and guidance, and work on presentation slides
• Pivot – Analyzing the feedback received through customer discovery and deciding to pursue another market or making major changes to your product or technology in order to better meet market needs