From whiteboard to boardroom, the UMKC Innovation Center partners with the university and the community to spark entrepreneurial efforts within our region and across the country. With a suite of high-impact programs that serve tech ventures, deliver entrepreneurial education, and build our entrepreneurial ecosystem, the center helps emerging and existing business owners, including students, faculty, and community members, to hone their business basics, evaluate commercialization opportunities and connect with the right resources at the right time.
Build to Scale Partners
Over the next three years, Digital Health KC and partners will advance early-stage digital health companies with programming to increase understanding of the unique aspects of building healthcare solutions, executing a go-to-market plan, and identifying and providing industry-specific mentors and business acumen support. This investment will result in more than 20 new startups for a regional total of 120+ companies, 15 completed beta customer projects, $45 million in debt and equity investment, and 500 new jobs for the KC region.
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Digital Sandbox KC
Igniting regional innovation, Digital Sandbox KC acts as a catalyst, offering critical proof-of-concept funding, project feedback and industry support.
BioNexus KC
The KC region is a global leader at the nexus of human and animal health, inspiring thinkers from diverse disciplines to combine their efforts for a common purpose — healthcare innovation. For over 20 years, BioNexus KC has been advancing the region’s strengths in digital health, cancer research, health equity, informatics, and rare disease.
BioNexus KC stimulates collaboration, accelerates emerging technology from concept to reality, and creates opportunities at the nexus of:
- Human and Animal Health
- Urban and Rural Health
- Healthcare and Information Technology
- Academia and Industry
- Kansas and Missouri
Nexus Informatics Conference (Jan - April)
The Nexus Informatics Conference will bring together informatics-minded researchers from academia and industry to discover capabilities, share tactical approaches to problem solving, explore synergies, and launch potential collaborations.
Pipeline Entrepreneurs
Since 2007, Pipeline has successfully identified the region’s top innovators and surrounded them with the education, support, a network, and resources to enable their businesses to gain traction and grow. As a result, Pipeline’s members have consistently outperformed their peers in revenue, job creation, and economic impact on the region. Over 200 entrepreneurs have graduated from the Pipeline program. Collectively, this group of entrepreneurs has generated more than $2.2BN in revenue, raised more than $750MM in capital, and created more than $950MM in wages for the region.
Pipeline Fellows
Each year, Pipeline selects a group of high-growth entrepreneurs to join a year long fellowship from across the midwest. The Fellowship year is defined by four, three-day modules focused on topics such as business models, financials, finding your customer, and much more. The goal of these modules is to help our entrepreneurs grow their companies and provide them with expert advice from our panel of national advisors and mentors.
KC Digital Drive
KC Digital Drive is the civic organization that supports the ecosystems for broadband, connectivity and digital equity, and emerging tech innovation, and helps to steward the region’s digital transformation. The organization was established by the cities of Kansas City, Missouri and Kansas City, Kansas to mobilize diverse community partners around collective action in digital inclusion and digital innovation, and drive economic development for the bi-state region. Learn more at kcdigitaldrive.org.
