Know Hub Chile launches Horizon Lab: a maturation and acceleration program for science and technology ventures

With the aim of addressing high uncertainty and mitigating technological and commercial risks in early stages, Know Hub Chile has launched the Horizon Lab program. This maturation and acceleration program is designed to identify and support emerging companies, startups, researchers and doctoral candidates working on science- and technology-based ventures (EBCTs) as they validate their value propositions, protect their innovations and enter the market.

The initiative was created to close the critical gap between scientific research and the market, on the understanding that an invention’s viability lies not only in its novelty or technical sophistication, but in its real ability to respond to concrete needs or opportunities in industry and society.

Horizon Lab adapts the renowned model of the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) I-Corps program to the local context, drawing on the Customer Discovery methodology. Through an iterative process of direct interaction with users and key players in the sector, participants test their assumptions about the problem, the customer segment, the value proposition and the features of their solution.

The program builds on Know Hub’s extensive track record in technology transfer and maturation, backed by 18 programs delivered and more than 200 participating researchers and managers.

The four teams taking part in Horizon Lab are backed by Fundación Copec UC and are developing science- and technology-based innovations applied to challenges in human health, food safety and agro-industrial sustainability: MOFLiBone (Universidad de Chile), a resorbable biomaterial functionalized with lithium nanoparticles that stimulates bone regeneration while providing mechanical support in complex skeletal reconstructions; PEUMA (Universidad de Chile), a biomedical information system that uses artificial intelligence to process intraoperative electroencephalogram signals to quantitatively and automatically estimate the risk of postoperative delirium in older adults; PhageStop (Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile), a chemical-free natural biocontrol agent based on lytic bacteriophages that reduces Salmonella bacteria in white meat by more than 90% without altering the food’s properties or quality; and ABWS (Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile), an integrated bioelectrochemical technology that seeks to add value to complex organic agro-industrial waste, such as pig slurry, by recovering energy and resources and reducing its pollutant load.

Intensive support

The program follows an intensive working model through personalized mentoring by the Know Hub Chile Mentor Network, with constant feedback, to provide the key foundations for building a robust technology venture, covering customer discovery and segmentation, applied intellectual property, building the initial market, and raising public and private capital.

Taky Parvex, Innovation Coordinator at Know Hub Chile, highlights that Horizon Lab is designed to narrow that critical gap between the lab and investment. “Our goal is for teams to come out with a validated business model, a clear intellectual property strategy and a concrete path to global capital,” he emphasizes.