GeoVerse Lab
← Innovation & International Collaboration Division

Startup Incubation & Entrepreneurship Center

Supports entrepreneurial ventures emerging from research by providing mentorship, resources, and seed funding, applying lean-startup methodology, business model canvas work, and pitch coaching to prepare founders for investment.

⚙️ GeoVerse System Administration Division🖥️ AI & Computing Sciences Division🔬 Basic Sciences Division⚡ Intelligent Geophysical Exploration Division🛢️ Resource & Energy Engineering Division🌍 Applied Geoscience Solutions Division💼 Economics, Policy & Strategy Division🎓 Education & Training Development Division🚀 Innovation & International Collaboration Division
Technology Transfer & Commercialization CenterInnovation Hub & Open R&D CenterStartup Incubation & Entrepreneurship CenterInternational Partnership & Cooperation CenterHorizon Scanning & Tech Intelligence Center
Steve Jobs🔑
⭐ Center Chief
Steve Jobs
Center Head
💡 Apple, design-driven entrepreneurship
Laurance Rockefeller🔑
1910–2004
Laurance Rockefeller
Researcher
💡 Pioneered personal angel investing in emerging technology ventures (aviation, electronics) decades before the term "angel investor" existed, funding early aerospace and tech startups directly from personal wealth
🚀 Innovation & International Collaboration DivisionStartup Incubation & Entrepreneurship Center
Ray Kroc🔑
1902–1984
Ray Kroc
Researcher
💡 Built McDonald's into the model for franchising as a system for rapidly scaling a proven business format, foundational to startup scale-up strategy
🚀 Innovation & International Collaboration DivisionStartup Incubation & Entrepreneurship Center
Claude C. Hopkins🔑
1866–1932
Claude C. Hopkins
Researcher
💡 Founded "scientific advertising," pioneering test campaigns, coupons, and measurable direct-response marketing — the direct historical origin of modern startup growth-hacking metrics
🚀 Innovation & International Collaboration DivisionStartup Incubation & Entrepreneurship Center
Joseph L. Mancuso🔑
1920–2008
Joseph L. Mancuso
Researcher
💡 Created the world's first business incubator in 1959 in Batavia, New York, coining the term "incubator" and establishing the model of subsidized shared space and support for early-stage tenant companies
🚀 Innovation & International Collaboration DivisionStartup Incubation & Entrepreneurship Center
Louis Brandeis🔑
1856–1941
Louis Brandeis
Researcher
💡 Wrote Other People's Money, the foundational critique and reform framework for how companies raise public capital and structure investor relations and disclosure
🚀 Innovation & International Collaboration DivisionStartup Incubation & Entrepreneurship Center
Shigeo Shingo🔑
1909–1990
Shigeo Shingo
Researcher
💡 Co-created the Toyota Production System with poka-yoke (error-proofing) and SMED (rapid changeover), the manufacturing-efficiency origins directly underlying lean startup methodology
🚀 Innovation & International Collaboration DivisionStartup Incubation & Entrepreneurship Center
Arthur C. Nielsen🔑
1897–1980
Arthur C. Nielsen
Researcher
💡 Founded the market research industry (A.C. Nielsen Company), pioneering systematic, data-driven measurement of consumer behavior underlying modern customer-validation practice
🚀 Innovation & International Collaboration DivisionStartup Incubation & Entrepreneurship Center
Chester Barnard🔑
1886–1961
Chester Barnard
Researcher
💡 Founded modern organizational theory with The Functions of the Executive, articulating cooperative-systems principles for how growing organizations coordinate and retain purpose as they scale
🚀 Innovation & International Collaboration DivisionStartup Incubation & Entrepreneurship Center
Thomas J. Perkins🔑
1932–2016
Thomas J. Perkins
Researcher
💡 Co-founded Kleiner Perkins and pioneered "operating venture capital," where investors take active board roles and hands-on operational mentorship of portfolio startups rather than passive financing
🚀 Innovation & International Collaboration DivisionStartup Incubation & Entrepreneurship Center
Napoleon Hill🔑
1883–1970
Napoleon Hill
Researcher
💡 Wrote Think and Grow Rich, systematizing principles of persuasion, goal articulation, and motivational psychology that underlie modern founder pitch coaching
🚀 Innovation & International Collaboration DivisionStartup Incubation & Entrepreneurship Center
Jean-Baptiste Say🔑
1767–1832
Jean-Baptiste Say
Researcher
💡 Coined the modern economic concept of the "entrepreneur" as the agent who shifts resources from lower to higher productivity, bearing the risk of value creation
🚀 Innovation & International Collaboration DivisionStartup Incubation & Entrepreneurship Center
William Shockley🔑
1910–1989
William Shockley
Researcher
💡 Founded Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory, whose employees' mass departure to found Fairchild Semiconductor (the "Traitorous Eight") catalyzed the deep-tech spin-off and founder-exodus culture that created Silicon Valley
🚀 Innovation & International Collaboration DivisionStartup Incubation & Entrepreneurship Center
Eugene Kleiner🔑
1923–2003
Eugene Kleiner
Researcher
💡 Led the "Traitorous Eight" out of Shockley Semiconductor to found Fairchild Semiconductor, then co-founded Kleiner Perkins, embodying the founder-to-investor career transition that built the Silicon Valley venture ecosystem
🚀 Innovation & International Collaboration DivisionStartup Incubation & Entrepreneurship Center
John Hay Whitney🔑
1904–1982
John Hay Whitney
Researcher
💡 Founded J.H. Whitney & Company in 1946, one of the first institutional venture capital firms, pioneering organized, professionally managed risk-capital investment in startups
🚀 Innovation & International Collaboration DivisionStartup Incubation & Entrepreneurship Center
Madam C. J. Walker🔑
1867–1919
Madam C. J. Walker
Researcher
💡 Became the first self-made female millionaire in America by building a direct-sales hair-care empire and training network, pioneering an entrepreneurship and distributed-sales model still used by underrepresented founders
🚀 Innovation & International Collaboration DivisionStartup Incubation & Entrepreneurship Center