Building implementation science capacity: Adaptation of I-Corps™@NCATS training for rapid fit-to-context discovery...

Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA) hubs must advance implementation science via innovative approaches to understand and develop strategies for overcoming barriers to the adoption, adaptation, integration, scale-up, and sustainability of evidence-based interventions, tools, policies, and guidelines. This special communication describes adaption of the I-Corps™@NCATS training program, a Lean Start-Up approach developed to advance commercialization of academic innovation, as a mechanism for building implementation science capacity at the Institute for Translational Medicine, a Chicago-based multi-institutional CTSA hub. Results from seven training cohorts (2021-2025) are presented (43 teams, 157 participants). In this five-week experiential program, teams conducted "customer discovery" interviews with stakeholders (mean = 23.8/team, SD = 5.6) to rapidly assess fit-to-context of their innovation and adoption requirements. Likelihood of recommending the program to a colleague was high (8.9, SD = 1.5; 1-10 scale, where "10" = "extremely likely"). Important adaptations were providing non-commercial use cases; defining "customers" in terms of stakeholders and partners; reframing commercial business model goals in terms of designing-for-dissemination-and-sustainability; and showing how the value proposition hypothesis is analogous to a research hypothesis being tested and validated with "customer discovery" data. Findings support that the modified I-Corps@NCATS training program provides flexible translational science skill-building to advance implementation science capacity among clinical and translational researchers.