From Innovation to Intrapreneurship: Fostering academic success via the GridlockED project and innovation fund

Funding for educational innovations is increasingly scarce in academic medicine. While there is some funding for medical education research, this is often for discovery or application work, and there are few avenues for those with a heavy innovation focus to fund early work.

The objective was to develop an intrapreneurial unit focused on medical education projects and scholarship.

The GridlockED and TriagED games are educational or serious games that seek to teach health care learners about emergency medicine processes. Both games were cocreated with learners and brought to market in the past 3 years. All of the proceeds from the sales of these games have been accrued over time to create a new innovation fund. This fund seeks to support trainees and early career educators in their medical education projects.

Sales for GridlockED began in March 2018 and the TriagED began in November 2019. In the first year, sales for GridlockED yielded a total of $9,534. After 18 months of sales, the fund has accrued a total of $14,530. The fund has helped finance the development of new games. Additionally, the fund awarded two internal $500 Kickstarter grants to assist with evaluating and improving two local education projects. The GridlockED and TriagED games have also spurred multiple academic opportunities for junior educators interested in this domain: five workshops, eight conference abstracts, two peer-reviewed papers, and two research protocols are being developed.

The GridlockED and TriagED games represent a new academically oriented, intrapreneurial approach to medical education work.