René has over 20 years of experience in innovation strategy, business development, economic development, technology commercialization, and venture startup. He is an instructor of the lean startup methodology for National Science Foundation entrepreneurs via its Innovation Corps program, and is a member of the External Board of Advisors for the Columbia University Center for Advanced Information Management. René has applied lean principles directly as the co-founder of 3 startups – REAL, a B2B cloud-based marketing analytics company transforming marketing and e-commerce at the intersection of recommendation technologies and neuropsychology; HVBio, employing biotechnology and self-assembly methods to enable single-walled carbon nanotube devices, and Medihub, an early Health IT company.