Economic Development

South Dakota Mines Office of Economic Development’s (OED) goal is to assist students, faculty, and other academic personnel to engage in entrepreneurial activities and transition scientific and technological innovations.

Below is a brief description of the activities the OED leads in relation to the goal stated above.

Activities

• Invention Disclosure Facilitation - We work with researchers and faculty to provide advice about potential intellectual property issues during research activities and to assist in the invention reporting process.
• IP Support - We provide advice on policies & procedures regarding matters of intellectual property.
• Patenting and Protection - We provide guidance in planning an effective patent, copyright, or trademark strategy and handle all implementation details during the protection stage.
• Start-up Assistance - We provide proactive assistance in analyzing potential opportunities to form a start-up based upon South Dakota Mines technology and encourages new venture formation early in the commercialization process.
• Commercialization of Technology - We assist in technical and market assessments and actively market South Dakota Mines technologies to industry partners. We create non-disclosure, material transfer, collaboration and license agreements with these industry partners to effectively transfer technology to the market. 
• Competitive Entrepreneurial Opportunity (CEO) - The CEO Student Business Plan Competition is a comprehensive, semester long program that immerses students in learning to draft a business plan and culminates in a pitch competition for cash prizes. The CEO program features several workshops focused on opportunity identification, introduces students to business concepts and project financials, and works through the contents of a standard business plan. Students from the CEO program have gone on to win several state and national business plan competitions in addition to securing other forms of funding and recognition. 
• Engineers Make Great Entrepreneurs (EMGE) - In partnership with the South Dakota Mines Center for Alumni Relations & Advancement, OED co-hosts this unique program that has been running for over a decade. The goal of the program is to expose South Dakota Mines students to entrepreneurship as a potential career choice. The program features presentations by a number of successful entrepreneurs and culminates with students presenting the insights they've gained and plans for utilizing them in their career planning.
• Entrepreneurs-in-Residence (EIR) Program - The EIR program has over 40 highly successful entrepreneurs who provide their time and support to our students through guest lectures on entrepreneurship, business formation, trend analysis, team building, and intellectual property throughout campus. They also volunteer for start-up weekend, mentor our CEO Student Business Plan competition participants, speak and attend our Engineers Make Great Entrepreneurs Speaker Series, and facilitate and participate in various other entrepreneurial efforts run out of the OED. EIR's lead or have led several of our successful university spin-outs. 
• I-Corps Assistance - The OED offers I-Corps assistance to undergraduate and graduate students from any major to help them acquire the skills needed to start their own business. I-Corps is based on a nation-wide program sponsored by the NSF to train students, faculty and staff about entrepreneurship.