i-Teams combines multi-disciplinary teams of students with industry mentors and real University inventions to assess the commercial viability of new technologies and product designs.

Students gain real hands-on experience of investigating potential markets for a new technology, while researchers are given early feedback from potential partners and customers.

Teams of up to 7 students, selected from across all disciplines, work for a term (2 weeks for Taster projects) with the support of their team mentor, their researchers and the i-Teams Programme Director (Amy Mokady). Teams present their final conclusions to an audience of business and academic experts, and have the opportunity to present their projects at the annual CUTEC Technology Ventures Conference.

Teams are asked to brainstorm possible real-world applications of their invention, and investigate their ideas by contacting external industry experts. In the process, they gain a taste of the processes needed to turn a lab technology or new product concept into a commercially-viable product, as well as learning a wide range of new skills.

Originally adapted from the successful MIT i-Teams programme, since 2006 i-Teams Cambridge has run 65 projects for 62 research teams, involving over 400 students and 33 business mentors. Typically 2/3 of students are studying for PhDs and 1/3 for Masters degrees. The majority of students are from science and engineering backgrounds, and the rest are studying business and humanities subjects.

In Spring 2011, i-Teams also launched at the Centre for Creative Collaboration in London, focusing on projects from the creative disciplines.

5% of projects so far have created new companies staffed by some of the original members of the student i-Team, and many more of the projects continue to be actively commercialised. In other cases, the i-Team has helped to make a rapid decision to stop commercialising a technology, allowing the researchers to focus their efforts on the projects with greatest potential.

In 2011/12 i-Teams will run projects in Cambridge during each Cambridge University term. Due to our successes so far, the Cambridge programme has been opened up to students and projects from any University in the East of England.