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By Scott Meacham Copyright © 2019, The Oklahoman Oklahoma is a great place to live. Oklahoma is a great place to work. We are a state that seems ready to seize the moment and leverage the quality of life and business-friendly advantages here to add innovation and technology-based economic development to Oklahoma’s list of “greats.”Read more

By Scott Meacham Copyright © 2019, The Oklahoman At i2E, we like to invest in life sciences companies. About 40 percent of our portfolio is in therapeutics, diagnostics and medical devices. We recognize the abundant opportunity for these types of startups in Oklahoma, and we have developed the staff, expertise and partnerships to commercialize technologiesRead more

By Scott Meacham Copyright © 2019, The Oklahoman With a lot of applause and anticipation, we just concluded the 2019 Love’s Entrepreneur’s Cup, Oklahoma’s only statewide collegiate business plan and pitch competition. This is the competition’s fifteenth year. Hundreds of Oklahomans are involved. A dedicated cadre of business leaders, investors, public sector officials, as wellRead more

By Scott Meacham Copyright © 2019, The Oklahoman Spring is an inspiring time of year around i2E as we enter the final phase of the 2019 Love’s Cup statewide collegiate business plan competition. Oklahoma owes a huge thank you to Love’s Travel Stops for sponsoring the competition, formerly known as the Governor’s Cup and nowRead more

By Scott Meacham Copyright © 2019, The Oklahoman When Gov. Kevin Stitt announced his vision for making Oklahoma a Top 10 State, those of us representing the Oklahoma Innovation Model — comprising OCAST (Oklahoma Center for the Advancement of Science & Technology), the Oklahoma Manufacturing Alliance (OMA), Oklahoma State University New Product Development Center (NPDC)Read more

By Scott Meacham Copyright © 2019, The Oklahoman Innovate. Innovate. Innovate. That’s the common theme in today’s economy. Innovation stimulates entrepreneurship. Successful entrepreneurship creates net new jobs. Driving innovation through collaboration to create jobs is the entire reason for being of the public-private consortium of the Oklahoma Center for the Advancement of Science and TechnologyRead more

By Scott Meacham Copyright © 2019, The Oklahoman I always tell every new company that I talk to: You have to crawl before you walk and walk before you run. The same thing applies to the capital path. The great thing for startups in this state is that The Oklahoma Innovation Model, which is uniqueRead more

By Scott Meacham Copyright © (2019), The Oklahoman I learn something new practically every day in this job. For example, did you know that Oklahoma has a state meal? According to the Oklahoma Historical Society website, that spread includes chicken-fried steak, barbecued pork, fried okra, squash, cornbread, grits, corn, sausage with biscuits and gravy, black-eyedRead more

By Scott Meacham Copyright © 2019, The Oklahoman In the business of creating new high-growth companies, “trade-off” is the name of the game. From idea to IPO, from survival mode to success, entrepreneurship calls for constant prioritizing and re-prioritizing. With limited capital — financial and human — for the first few years of a startup’sRead more

By Scott Meacham Copyright © 2019, The Oklahoman This summer marks the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing — the NASA mission that made Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin the first human beings to walk on a planetary body that wasn’t Earth. Of all the Apollo 11 lore, one of my favorite storiesRead more

By Scott Meacham Copyright © 2019, The Oklahoman As Oklahomans, we live with pumps. We draw most of our water from out of the ground; we’re used to seeing pumpjacks bobbing their grasshopper-shaped heads all over the state. So, when somebody says “prime the pump” we understand the metaphor in a very real-world way. “PrimeRead more

By Scott Meacham Copyright © 2019, The Oklahoman Regardless of the state you live in or where your children go to school, STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) skills are the key to career opportunities today and will be exponentially more important over the next five years. In Oklahoma, as in every other state, weRead more

By Scott Meacham Copyright © 2019, The Oklahoman For a young company, it’s never easy and the hard work is never over. It’s a long, difficult battle full of fits and starts and failure before success. That’s why it is especially inspiring when an Oklahoma startup sprints out ahead of the pack and continues toRead more

By Scott Meacham Copyright © 2019, The Tulsa World/BH Media Group The Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation is one of the finest biomedical research institutions in the world. I2E is honored to be a commercialization partner with this organization of 400-plus scientists who evince such a passion and singular focus on understanding and curing human disease.Read more

By Scott Meacham Copyright © 2019, The Oklahoman Profitable exits are the holy grail of venture investing. The reason is fairly obvious. It typically takes an exit event for equity investors to get their original investment back and to gain the benefit of any returns. A successful liquidity event distributes the funds for venture investorsRead more

By Scott MeachamCopyright © 2019, The Oklahoman I value benchmarking. Whatever the goal, comparing metrics with industry leaders is the best way to test and improve results. Especially when the comparison is not what we would want it to be. It is no surprise that when it comes to the key indicators of a robustRead more

By Scott Meacham Copyright © 2019, The Oklahoman A few years ago, I attended an executive education program in venture capital at the University of California at Berkeley. The program, which promises to give investors, executives and serious entrepreneurs a window into venture capital and tips on how to succeed with VC firms, delivers asRead more

By Scott Meacham Copyright © 2019, The Oklahoman Every Jan. 1, Pitt Island, an island in New Zealand’s Chatham Island archipelago, is the first populated location on earth to welcome the first sunrise of the new year. Located about 430 miles east of mainland New Zealand and just west of the international date line, PittRead more

By Scott MeachamCopyright © 2018, The Oklahoman Every year at this time, I think about my grandparents — about how different their world was from ours today, and about how much about it, happily, is still the same. I had two sets of grandparents growing up. On my dad’s side, we go back to theRead more

By Scott Meacham Copyright © 2018, The Oklahoman Oklahoma continues to strive for a more diversified economy. As a state, we have historically depended too much on oil and gas. At the same time, we share a tremendous appreciation for and experience in the energy industry. When entrepreneurs apply energy industry know-how toward new companiesRead more