Case Study: Notre Dame’s IDEA Center validates 100+ market opportunities and doubles company launches with UserTesting

How Notre Dame turns ideas into profitable business realities

The University of Notre Dame’s IDEA Center is an innovation hub that helps faculty, students, and alumni turn early‑stage ideas into commercial startups. Evaluating market viability for highly technical or niche concepts — especially during the pandemic — proved difficult for founders (for example, recruiting participants experienced in exosome isolation), so the Center needed a faster, broader way to test real customer demand.

By partnering with UserTesting, IDEA Center teams use targeted Live Conversations and unmoderated tests, plus highlight reels and transcripts, to answer core market questions quickly (often within two hours). That approach validated 100+ market opportunities, helped double the number of companies launched in 2019, and led to 84% of new companies being started based on UserTesting insights; collectively those startups have raised $6.6M and generated $10.9M in product sales.

IDEA Center

Ben Hoggan

Director of De-Risking