University connections: a university partnership can be vital to your company.

• Author: Beck, Steve
• Position: VIEWPOINT

WHY ARE UNIVERSITY-business partnerships relevant to your business?

In today's fast-changing and innovative international economy, those companies that have access to the brightest and best talent and ideas will not only survive, but thrive. When you work with one of the universities in Indiana, you gain access to some of the brightest minds in the world--faculty and students. Universities in Indiana are thought leaders in engineering, information technology, computer security, biology, informatics, media design, architecture, plastics, life sciences, genomics and many other areas too numerous to name.

A good example of the value of working with Indiana schools is the Indiana Venture Center's "University Connections Program." The program is a joint effort of the Indiana Venture Center and its five university partners (Ball State University, Indiana University, Purdue University, Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology and University of Notre Dame.)

This past summer, the Indiana Venture Center employed 10 graduate-level and two undergraduate-level students to work with high-growth Indiana companies. During an 11-week period, our Hoosier Fellows worked with more than 20 companies on projects including market validation, pricing strategy, technology validation, market identification, information strategy and other business issues. These students were some of the brightest individuals we have ever had the pleasure of working with. If these companies had not been willing to establish a university-business partnership, they would not be experiencing the rewards of working with these talented students---who in the end changed or improved each of these companies' commercialization strategies.

Another example is the center's "University Entrepreneurial Challenge" which took place in October. The Indiana Venture Center's...