As the Year Comes to an End…
A Time for Reflection and Looking Forward
It’s that time of year again…a time to look back and reflect on all that was accomplished throughout the year, and also a time to look ahead with a renewed sense of passion and excitement at the next 12 months.
For the iBridge Network, 2010 was a year of great success and momentum. We continued to serve as an innovation hub for entrepreneurs, universities, organizations and industry by providing access to the right people, the most appropriate resources and the brightest thinking. We began the year with 3,700+ members and we finished with nearly 5,000 spanning across 119 organizations including four of the top five, seven of the top 10, and 19 of the top 25 research universities in the United States. Since our inception we have talked a lot about putting ideas, access, transparency and outcomes at the forefront of today’s innovation agenda and we are pleased to say that in 2010 we added nearly 4,000 innovations to the site and had nearly 160,000 visitors check out what we were doing.
Additionally, we established working partnerships and collaborations with: Knowledge Sharing Systems (KSS) to interface KSS TechTracS® to the iBridge online community, enabling universities and research institutions to better highlight their intellectual property portfolios; and recipients of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Clinical and Translational Science Awards (CTSA), a consortium of 46 medical research institutions dedicated to enhancing the efficiency and quality of clinical and translational research, to seamlessly join users of CTSA’s CTSA-IP initiative with more than 100 other research institutions around the world.
Furthermore, we also implemented our previously announced relationship with the USA National Innovation Marketplace—which is supported by the US Department of Commerce’s NIST/MEP Network and Eureka! Ranch International—to enable innovation and research listings from non-profit organizations to coexist on our site, allowing for even more exposure and collaboration opportunities for them.
And, what is perhaps our most exciting endeavor of the year, we continued our international expansion! In November 2009 we signed the acclaimed Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore’s leading science and technology university, as our first international member organization. We carried that momentum into 2010 with the addition of Toronto’s University Health Network and the Norwegian University of Science and Technology.
Of course, none of this would be possible without the unwavering support and participation of all of our member organizations as well as the commitment of our passionate employees and advisors. We want to thank everyone involved in making 2010 a huge success for iBridge and for innovation and we look forward to continuing our efforts and working with all of you in 2011. Happy Holidays!
