N2Tec Institute

N2TEC Institute began as an NSF-PFI funded initiative at the University of Southern California in 2001 under the leadership of Dr. Kathleen Allen.  Its goal was to build a collaboration environment that would encourage the sharing of resources and expertise without regard to geographic boundaries. During the period of the grant, the principal investigators succeeded in developing a collaboration network of 22 industry, university, and government partners and, with the assistance of Microsoft Corp., built a commercialization portal that served as a virtual collaboration space. 

The core partners in the NSF-supported effort realized that they needed to do more than simply offer a collaboration network, so in 2006, N2TEC Institute was incorporated as a non-profit organization in Rapid City, South Dakota with a purpose to raise the level of innovation diffusion and wealth creation in Rural America and to be the premier trusted authority on effective commercialization practices and the development of High Performance Regions.  We received initial grants from the South Dakota Governor's Office of Economic Development and from the Black Hills Vision group.  Subsequent to this funding, we have received grants from South Dakota EPSCoR and the Small Business Administration.

We accomplish our purpose in a number of ways:

• Building a community of experts dedicated to innovation and technology commercialization practices.
• Partnering with organizations that can contribute expertise and resources to support our effort.
• Providing resources and educational opportunities to facilitate effective innovation, technology commercialization, and entrepreneurship.
• Developing best practices, standards of excellence, and models for communities and others to emulate