Diane brings over a decade of managing hard-tech innovation portfolios from opportunity discovery to product launch. As an innovation consultant she served Forthune 50 companies in the materials, energy, agricultural, life sciences and helthcare sectors and continued her industry agnostic tech stewardship running the Innovation Partnerships Startup Incubator at University of Michigan. Selecting and leading cohorts of 60 companies from 1500 global applications at Medtch Innovator – the worlds largest accelerator of Medical Technology has given her access to national and global networds of industry leaders and investors in her chosen industry: the BioMedHealth sector.

At the SBDC she supports companies with:

• Lean Startup coaching – Product Market fit – Customer Discovery: the translation of (academic) science or a napkin drawing and a vision to a business hypothesis, a plan for testing it and building a business around it
• Wet-lab needs and management: the choice to open up a lab, collaborate with an academic lab, another company or a CRO is an ealy, costly and consequential decision requiring an understanding of (local) resources, regulations and costs.
• Company Strategy: Building with the exit in mind: truly understanding the competitive landscape and where a product might fit into the roadmaps of strategics (large companies in the space) helps build testable business hypotehses that craft a company startegy
• Fundraising Strategy and Investor readiness: Moving form technical prowess to returning investment multiples over time is a mind-shift that is important for entrepreneurs to communicate. Leveraging non-dilutive funding and navigating the Angel and venture capital landscape, including incubators, accelerators and conferences.

Dr Bouis earned her PhD in medical biology at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands and her MBA at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business. She is acting CEO of an in-market medical device company (Microvascular Health Solutions by BioRegenex in Chattanooga, TN) and serves as a mentor in several national and global health and medtech accelerators as well as an external IRB member at Michigan Medicine. Dr Bouis is a consultant and frequent speaker on medtech/ biotech/ health-tech innovation, investment and go to market strategy, incubators and accelerators, mentorship, leadership and growing strong teams.

Besides her global roles, this native of France is a staunch supporter of her chosen Midwest startup home ecosystem and advisor to and investor in Michigan biomedical startups.