The Commercialization Engine
The Commercialization Engine is a value-adding process through which all University of Notre Dame business ideas and invention disclosures pass after submission to the IDEA Center. Its goal is to take early-stage disclosures through the process of derisking and to transform them into life-changing and productive applications. This is accomplished by thoroughly understanding disclosures, finding their value, determining their market fit, acting on feedback from potential customers and partners, protecting intellectual property, creating a strong business model, identifying milestones, and executing an acceleration plan.
On a macro level, the Commercialization Engine was created to address the challenge of answering critical commercialization questions about disclosures such as, “what is the new idea?”, “what is the opportunity for this new disclosure?”, “who are the best partners to maximize impact?” and “what will it take to effectively address this opportunity in the market?”
The IDEA Center has incorporated many of the latest entrepreneurial ideas and texts from thought leaders around the world into the Commercialization Engine and molded them to work in a university setting.
The Commercialization Engine is split into three progressive stages to focus efforts on milestones that help derisk, vet, and develop disclosures: 1) Risk Assessment, 2) Derisking, and 3) Enterprise Acceleration.
Each stage represents the level of resources, development, and understanding of the market opportunity for the disclosure and the stage of that disclosure’s business model. Each of the three stages has specific deliverables and objectives that must be met in order for a disclosure to progress to the next stage.
Although the Commercialization Engine has a structured framework, it is also flexible. A disclosure can enter and exit the Commercialization Engine at any time depending on the stage of development, external interest, and licensing activities.