Center for Advancing Innovation

The Center for Advancing Innovation (CAI) is a registered 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, headquartered in Bethesda, Maryland, with a mission to accelerate technology transfer and commercialization. CAI was founded by Rosemarie Truman, a consultant and former VP of Global Strategy at Marsh & McLennan. Rosemarie was also a senior manager at Oracle and Goldman Sachs and led R&D and innovation strategy practice globally at IBM.[1] CAI is a partner of The Founder Institute,[2] BIO[3], J&J's JLABs[4], AstraZeneca, the Walton Family Foundation[5], the Brain Tumour Charity, the Silicon Valley Community Foundation[6] and many other organizations.

Among its efforts to promote innovation, CAI organizes startup "challenges" in which multidisciplinary teams from around the world develop business plans to commercialize federally funded technologies. Industry experts judge hundreds of business plans about these promising technologies to determine challenge "winners", which enter into licensing negotiations with participating technology transfer offices. As of 2017, CAI has orchestrated four startup challenges: the National Institutes of Health-sponsored Breast Cancer Startup Challenge, Neuro Startup Challenge, and Nanotechnology Startup Challenge in Cancer competitions, as well as the SPACE RACE startup challenge in partnership with NASA and the Medical Center of the Americas Foundation.[7][8] To spin out 100 startup companies around commercially viable, oncology-related inventions from universities, hospitals, and federal laboratories, CAI most recently launched the Freedom from Cancer Startup Challenge in partnership with MedImmune and with financial support from the Laura and John Arnold Foundation.[9] From its startup challenges, CAI has launched 58 startups and trained more than 2000 entrepreneurs.

CAI has received notable coverage in the press. In 2015, the Washington Post reported on CAI for success in bridging government and start-up communities.[10] In 2016, the U.S. Government Accountability Office featured CAI's startup challenge model in a report to Congress on open innovation to “effectively implement federal initiatives”.[11] In 2017, Nature Biotechnology dubbed CAI as the “Tinder for Startups” and reported on the Freedom from Cancer Startup Challenge.[12]

Along with significant press coverage, CAI has been recognized by the U.S. Government. CAI received an “Excellence in Federal Challenge & Prize Competition” award from the U.S. General Services Administration in the category of “Best in Business Plans/Entrepreneurship” for the Breast Cancer Startup Challenge it organized with the National Cancer Institute and Avon Foundation for Women.[13] CAI was also recognized by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services with the Secretary's Pick award for orchestrating the Breast Cancer Startup Challenge[14] and by the Federal Laboratory Consortium with an "Excellence in Technology Transfer Award", one of the “most prestigious honors in the [tech transfer] field” and a “symbol of well-deserved recognition for phenomenal technological efforts”.[15] In 2016, the White House recognized the Breast Cancer Startup Challenge in a list of President Obama's top 10 actions to advance entrepreneurship for stimulating “entrepreneurial solutions”[16] and at #36 of 100 “Examples of President Obama’s Leadership in Science, Technology, and Innovation” for accelerating the “transition of research discoveries from lab to market”.[17]