Raising Capital Investments to Manufactue and Market Academe-invented Products

With recent Internet bubble burst, many venture capitalist firms are very reluctant to provide seed money for new ventures. And with growing academic budget problems many universities simply do not have revenue available to fund new projects. This paper presents several years of research to find effective ways to form partnerships between industry and academe to raise capital investments to manufacture and market academeinvented products. This paper discusses many obstacles and challenges that engineering institutions have to face in order to form a partnership with industry to bring academe-invented projects to the market. The hard lessons learned should serve as valuable guidelines to many engineering institutions that are embarking on forming a similar partnership with industry. A successful business plan and formation of a spin-off company are also discussed.