Originally Published by Connected World
Nations have fought wars, both physical and conceptual, over many issues. These days, technology can be the motive for aggressive competition among countries. Boosting a country’s innovation is one way to establish a beachhead.
An innovation-focused association was recently created to accelerate the success of the diverse and distributed innovators in the U.S. matching national priorities. That group, NTA (National Technology Alliance), is considered a first-of-its-kind national organization to connect early-stage innovations with curated funding and commercialization opportunities. NTA will provide an inclusive ecosystem and sustainable infrastructure for expediting the economic and societal impacts of government and commercial investments in innovative technologies.
While individuals and companies may create innovative technologies, those results may languish without proper funding. NTA brings together, for the first-time, builders of key innovation ecosystems and portfolios with leading funding and commercialization programs. By serving as the country’s only sustained effort to support regional and national innovation ecosystems, NTA provides a pathway to the nation’s largest pipeline of private sector emerging technologies matched with the largest curated pipeline of commercialization opportunities.
NTA’s focus includes energy and sustainability; biotech and medical; microelectronics; advanced materials; advanced manufacturing; advanced communications; aerospace and defense; and AI (artificial intelligence) and digital transformation.
NTA’s Catalyst Partner program features leading regional and national associations, ecosystems, and commercialization offices with similarly focused missions to accelerate innovation to benefit the nation’s economy and society. It’s specifically partnering with technology-focused consortia, university and lab technology transfer offices, nationally distributed accelerators and incubators, regional economic development offices, and key government funding initiatives focused on emerging technology commercialization.
NTA is backed by ATI (Advanced Technology Intl.), a public service, not-for-profit collaboration management organization, and ATI’s TechConnect division, which supports technology acceleration programs across diverse industry sectors and maintains partnership programs with all U.S. funding agencies.
NTA’s biannual member meetings in the summer and fall of each year will align with the TechConnect Innovation Conference series. With 25+ years of experience connecting emerging technologies with unique funding and partnership opportunities, TechConnect boasts the most robust research and innovation network in the world. It employs a broad scope of tools to deliver top technologies, including open innovation programs, conferences, and open-access publications.
Each year, TechConnect prospects, vets, and connects thousands of emerging technologies with corporate, investment, municipal, and national defense clients. TechConnect is a division of Advanced Technology International. The conference series includes co-located SBIR/STTR Innovation Summits, numerous challenge and prize programs, and year-round NTA networking opportunities.
Membership is offered at no cost to applicants. NTA member benefits include access to NTA members-only engagements, such as matchmaking, networking sessions, special scouting/funding opportunities as well as access to NTA webinars and training on how to work with the federal government. NTA does not manage technology scouting contracts, take equity in any deal, or directly manage government contracting.
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