Our Clients

The ITDA delivers commercialization services to entrepreneurs who have innovative ideas, inventions, and intellectual property that can be developed into scalable, technology businesses. We also serve major corporations and government agencies that have technology needs or under-used technologies with market potential.

Our expertise and resources are aligned with the needs of our clients and this region’s economy. We provide real-world consulting, mentoring, and training in business operations and fund raising to help move scientific and technological breakthroughs efficiently from the laboratory to the marketplace.

Our Commercialization Model fits both established and entrepreneurial companies. Think of us as a multi-directional pipeline that helps match mission-critical, high-technology requirements and solutions between entrepreneurs, large corporations, research institutions, universities, government entities, service providers, and sources of capital.

Our task is a little bit different with every client, and the reason we accomplish as much as we do is because our process has great strength and flexibility and because we don’t consider our job complete until our clients have paying customers. In 2006, the ITDA facilitated the commercialization of more than 70 businesses.

Entrepreneurs

The entrepreneur is central to everything we do. We offer shoulder-to-shoulder coaching, expert mentoring, and access to a vital network of capital sources, customers, service providers, and partners. Our goal is to help entrepreneurs create high-growth businesses that are venture-ready and razor focused. We do this by identifying their greatest needs and using our expertise, resources, relationships, and contacts to overcome obstacles to reach a milestone that our clients would not otherwise be able to reach by themselves.

For entrepreneurs who aren’t at a stage where we can add value, we do our best to direct them to other resources that might be of help.

Government Agencies

The Illinois Technology Transition Center (ITTC) works with the help from local, state, and branches of the federal governments to achieve commercialization of their most innovative technologies and to source technologies to meet their most mission-critical needs. Our federal clients include the Department of Defense,, the Department of Energy, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and the Small Business Administration. Our structured process and extensive business relationships build awareness between regional companies and government entities and provides the structure and expertise to bring more federal dollars into the Midwest.

Corporations

In addition to providing our corporate clients access to government-developed technologies,, our Corporate IP Spinout Program helps large companies realize the commercial potential of core and non-core intellectual property by inserting those technologies into the marketplace in a new application through a new company.

Our corporate IP spin-out model, which was validated and refined by Boston Consulting Group (BCG) and DiamondCluster International, has served major companies like Caterpillar, Inc. of Peoria, turn latent intellectual property into products, companies, and jobs.

Investors

The ITDA has worked with scores of angel investors, venture capitalists, and institutional financiers. These important sources of investment capital recognize that we offer informed access to one of the nation's most dynamic pipelines of cutting-edge technology companies.

In addition to one-on-one meetings, we help investors gain visibility to our clients through bi-monthly Monday Morning Meetings where outstanding early-stage technology companies present their business plans and through our bi-monthly TechAlert newsletter, which includes articles about early-stage businesses that are ready for outside investment. The ITDA's government programs give investors access to venture-ready technologies and companies screened and funded by leading government agencies.

We offer investor entities a rigorous due diligence process that is based on our commercialization model and tested with Stateline Angels, the angel investment group that we helped start in Rockford, IL.