We activate ideas through execution.
Waco Ventures (WAVE) began our unique collaboration with Baylor University in 2019, with the initial beginnings of the journey coming one year earlier in a bold mandate by President Livingstone that Baylor would become a R-1 Research Institute by the end of 2024. The Baylor University’s Lab2Market Collaborative (L2M Collaborative) leadership knew that if they were going to move tech commercialization and tech transfer at the needed pace, they would have to scale themselves, as well as identify a capital partner who could move at the speed of business and industry, while concomitantly raising capital and building new operating companies for newly outbound technologies into the Waco area.
WAVE and Baylor University have solidified our results-focused L2M Collaborative where WAVE provides funding for early-stage technology companies that leverage valuable intellectual property and products invented and further developed in the collaborative to ultimately create profitable ventures in the marketplace.
The L2M Collaborative was uniquely established to translate research that addresses pressing societal challenges into products and services that have real-world impact.
The Baylor L2M Collaborative requires a unique culture of results and accountability above any individual agendas. This has allowed great success in our early collaborations and sets the stage for 3-4 new technologies completely transferred per year moving forward.
John Crandall
Business Development Director
Technology Commercialization and Industry Engagement
Office of the Vice Provost for Research
The L2M Collaborative was officially expanded to include WAVE with the founding and funding of our first portfolio company, 6P Color, Inc., in January 2020. Since then, we have been working hand in hand with the Vice Provost of Research and their staff designees to build, improve, and now prepare for scale as the success in early stage tech commercialization begins to mount up. Combining results-focused execution with win-win-win- required culture and leadership, WAVE now sits as the third management group in early technology commercialization after Baylor Laboratories reports and instigates tech development. From there, WAVE steps into a standardized role of transferring the technology for commercial use, founding and creating the operating companies and structures needed for success, and then seating the world class talent required to operate these unique early-stage ventures.
Because of the hard work on and off campus, and with systems, teams, and scalability in place, Baylor University has been recognized by the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education as one of the newest institutions to attain R1 Status in December 2021 – three years ahead of schedule.