Stephen Fleming manages the Georgia Tech Edison Fund.

Thomas Edison often receives credit for inventing the electric lightbulb, though his real accomplishment was in making it commercially successful. That focus on commercializing innovation is now providing the foundation for a new venture bearing Edison's name at Georgia Tech.

Launched by a multiyear grant from the Charles A. Edison Fund — named for the inventor's son, a successful businessman and former governor of New Jersey — the Georgia Tech Edison Fund will provide seed funding for early-stage technology companies that have a close association with the Institute.

"We will focus on startups at the very early stage, because that's the hardest money for an entrepreneur to find," said Stephen Fleming, Georgia Tech's chief commercialization officer and manager of the new fund. The Georgia Tech Edison Fund has already made its first investment in Pramana, a member company of the Advanced Technology Development Center that is commercializing Internet technology developed in the College of Computing.

Fleming said the Charles Edison Fund and Georgia Tech are natural collaborators. "Edison means innovation, invention and creativity — all of which are things we are trying to do. This helps us get our message across very quickly." The collaboration is Edison's first university partnership.

Edward Allman, IE 48, a longtime member of the Charles Edison Fund board of directors, played a key role in advocating the funding to establish the Georgia Tech Edison Fund. "Georgia Tech was founded on a tradition of taking theory and applying it to the real world in ways that make people's lives better. Thomas Edison once said that genius is 1 percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration, which reminds me of what life was all about at Tech."