We are not a think tank.
We are not a lecture hall.
We are where ideas get built.
Students become entrepreneurs. Faculty research finds its way to market. Innovators across Maryland test and validate their ideas, refining them until they're ready for the real world.
Startups get built. Maryland companies access the intellectual firepower they need to grow. For more than forty years, this is where the state's best ideas have gone to work.
One factory. Four stages.
STAGE 01 · BLUEPRINT - Learn to think like a builder.
STAGE 02 · PROVING GROUND - Where your idea meets the real world.
STAGE 03 · ASSEMBLY LINE - This is where companies get built.
STAGE 04 · SCALE-UP - Where it takes off.
Find your way in.
Student, faculty, researcher, company, or partner — whoever you are, there's a door here for you.
Use Idea Factory to…
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Learn about innovation
At the Blueprint stage, we work with students and emerging innovators who are learning what it means to think entrepreneurially. This isn't theory for its own sake. Our undergraduate courses, the Minor in Technology Entrepreneurship, the Master of Technology Entrepreneurship, and the Master of Professional Studies in Product Management prepare students not just to understand innovation, but to practice it. Our ASPIRE program puts undergraduates directly into real-world, industry-relevant research projects, because the best way to learn how to build is to start building.
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Find an innovation program
Through our NSF I-Corps programs, including the NSF I-Corps Mid-Atlantic Hub and UMD I-Corps, we train innovators in the discipline of customer discovery. We send them into the field with a methodology and bring them back with data. Some come back having confirmed their instincts. Many come back having completely reimagined their approach.
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Find innovation events
Find all upcoming events being hosted by the Idea Factory.
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Find a lab/space for creating/making
Mtech Ventures Incubator gives early-stage, technology-based companies the space and support to survive the most dangerous stretch of their development: the period between a promising idea and a first round of real capital. With affordable lab and office space, hands-on mentorship, and access to the extraordinary resources of the University of Maryland and the broader University System of Maryland, Mtech Ventures is where companies get serious about becoming companies.
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Identify/apply for funding & grants
Innovative companies often need help developing new products or face a problem that requires research-level expertise. That's what the Maryland Industrial Partnerships (MIPS) program does. It gives Maryland's businesses direct access to the research talent, laboratory resources, and innovative thinking of the state's public universities.
MIPS provides matching grant funding for university-based research projects that help Maryland companies develop new products and create new jobs. In the decades since the program launched, MIPS-supported products have generated more than $52.7 billion in sales and directly created over 14,000 high-paying, long-term jobs. The program is nationally recognized by the U.S. Small Business Administration as a model for technology transfer and economic development.
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Mentor innovators
Your experience helps researchers, students and founders turn ideas into companies. Consider one of four ways to mentor, advise, and collaborate with the Idea Factory.