By Visar Berisha, Professor and Associate Dean for Research Commercialization, Fulton Schools of Engineering, and NSF I-Corps Faculty Lead, Arizona State University (ASU)

In 2016, at the suggestion of a National Science Foundation (NSF) program officer, our lab at ASU participated in one of the first joint NSF–NIH (National Institutes of Health) I-Corps programs to explore whether our research-based discovery of speech-based biomarkers could enable earlier diagnosis of neurological disease. Like many academic teams, we began with a well-supported value proposition hypothesis: clinicians and speech-language pathologists would value objective tools for earlier diagnosis and tracking of conditions such as Parkinson’s or Alzheimer’s disease. What we learned through customer discovery was that our assumptions about where the real problems lay were incomplete. Neurologists told us that diagnosis was often already sufficient, early detection was not always actionable, and from speech language pathologists we learned that even promising clinical tools could fail to matter without a clear path to adoption. The most consequential insight came from outside our disciplinary comfort zone. When we began speaking with pharmaceutical companies, we discovered that a key bottleneck was not diagnosis, but measurement: the lack of reliable, objective endpoints for tracking disease progression in clinical trials. That realization reshaped not only the trajectory of our subsequent company, but the way I think about research, impact, and the role of structured discovery in expanding an academic research agenda. 

This experience was a turning point not just because it led to a commercial outcome, but because it reshaped how we framed the research itself. By engaging stakeholders early, the work expanded in directions we had not anticipated: partnerships with pharmaceutical companies reframed speech as a scalable measurement tool for clinical trials; interactions with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) opened new research questions around how to validate speech-based clinical endpoints; and collaboration with patient advocacy groups informed study design, recruitment, and outcome measures grounded in the lived experience of those directly affected by the conditions we studied. 

NSF I-Corps is often viewed narrowly as a pathway to commercialization, something relevant primarily for faculty interested in starting companies. My experience pushed me toward a different interpretation. At its core, the customer discovery process is a research tool, one that helps bridge the gap between lab research and real-world impact by systematically revealing who benefits from our work, under what conditions, and why. In a funding environment that increasingly values use-inspired research, the kind of structured engagement I-Corps provides isn’t a departure from scholarly rigor. It’s a necessity. By forcing us to confront assumptions, identify new beneficiaries, and refine problem formulations, I-Corps sharpens existing research questions, opens new ones, and builds more resilient research agendas. 

In that sense, participating in I-Corps did not make me more entrepreneurial. It made me a more effective researcher.

Whether you already know you want to commercialize your research, are entrepreneurially curious, or are simply seeking ways to increase the real-world impact of your work, NSF I-Corps offers a powerful entry point. If you are a researcher wondering how to make your work more impactful, I encourage you to consider I-Corps as a structured way to test and expand the questions you are already asking. You may find, as I did, that the most valuable outcome is a new way of thinking about the problem space your research agenda addresses.