New Jersey Innovation Acceleration Center (NJIAC)

The New Jersey Innovation Acceleration Center (NJIAC), a collaborative resource for entrepreneurs, is open for business at the New Jersey Institute of Technology. NJIT has a long history of technological research and the NJIAC is designed to bring those resources together with students, faculty and other entrepreneurs to create cutting edge innovation and empower bold ventures.  A key defining factor of the Center is the focus on helping ventures accelerate their development achieving time to market and time to profitability milestones.

Another key goal of the center is to intensify the connections between the academic and entrepreneurial communities. For many years, professors from the NJIT School of Management have been working with companies from the Enterprise Development Center (EDC), the high-tech/life sciences business incubator located at 211 Warren Street in Newark, to achieve this goal. Various School of Management programs that support entrepreneurs include the NJIT Small Business Institute capstone course where students provide field-based consulting for EDC companies on their business, marketing and fund raising plans, an international business consulting program and a venture acceleration workshop. These services are now available to start up companies throughout NJ.

The following sponsors for the program, Capital One and Sterling Medical, provide Innovation Acceleration Fellowships to winners ($3000 each) for summer support to allow students to work on continuing development of their business ideas. Full-time participation over the summer is required.

 

Initial submission must be four paragraphs (not more than two pages) answering the following questions:

  1. What is the problem that this company proposes to solve? (Need)
  2. How does the company plan to solve the problem? (Application)
  3. How does the company plan to make money from this application? (Value Proposition)
  4. What is the competition and what is the competence of the management team? (Competition)

Initial submission must be made by email to: ehrlich@njit.edu

For more information, please visit the website.

Information about the Newark Acceleration Challenge Competition sponsored by Capital One Bank is available on the website.