IURTC Launches ‘The Quarry’ For Entrepreneurs

Whitney says the ultimate goal is to have a coworking space in every county.

The Indiana University Research and Technology Corp. has launched an initiative designed to help IU entrepreneurs. The Quarry will provide assistance and support to IU faculty, staff and students throughout the university’s statewide network who are interested in launching startups. Jason Whitney, manager of strategic partnerships for the IURTC, says The Quarry will fill in the gaps for entrepreneurs.

"The business development side is not the skill set that a lot of the researchers have as their primary focus, so it’s nice for them to be able to have a team to sit down with of ombudsmen that can help walk them through the process of licensing back their technology from the university, walking them through the patent process and then looking for commercially-viable options to get their research out."

Whitney says The Quarry is a revamp of a previous program called Spin Up and addresses additional needs raised by IU faculty. He says the services offered by The Quarry take a three-pronged approach: developing the business case, identifying potential funding sources and recruiting long-term executive talent.

The university says the service will be available to faculty, staff and students at all of its campuses and regional academic centers, which Whitney says can pose a challenge.

"Obviously, distance plays a big part of it but having good partnership relationships with those other institutions is very important to us," said Whitney. "We have a regional economic development team that meets bi-monthly and (I’m) actually meeting with that team next week to roll this program out and making sure that they’re able to recruit faculty members on their own individual campuses that we can engage into the network and it allows those researchers to stay in those communities that they love to work in, but still utilize the program for the whole university."

Whitney says The Quarry ties in with one of the priorities of IU’s Bicentennial Strategic Plan, which is "Building a Prosperous and Innovative Indiana."