Commercialization in the Grant Process

The Neutrino Donut recently completed a series of review sessions on grants for SBIR, DoD, and a few other places. Commercialization has been a weakness in the process. Let’s review.

  1. You need commercialization experts on your team. People who have taken a product into the marketplace. Not your friend’s nephew and definitely not the grad student who worked on the project.
  2. Who are your customers? Who is going to buy your product? If you have to resell them the product next year, will they be around to buy it? Also, a minor point – do they have money to spend on you?
  3. Who are you selling to? Who approves the sale? Where is purchasing in this process? Who can veto your sale?
  4. How do you create ongoing revenue? Selling to someone once and moving on does not work.
  5. Have you considered partnerships with people who already work with your targeted customers?
  6. Do you need product certifications, such as security with the Amazon Cloud product? This is where the partnership discussion above comes in handy.
  7. Do you have IP that can be acquired?
  8. Do you have any competitors? Don’t forget – doing nothing is a competitor.

Find a consulting organization who can help you with the commercialization part. That would be us at The Neutrino Donut, LLC.

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