Innovation and Technology Commercialization

The term “innovation” has multiple interpretations. For many companies, it’s the focus point for growing both top and bottom line revenues. For entrepreneurs and early-stage companies, innovation is essential to the company’s existence. Universities strive to transform their intellectual property into innovative products and services. Governments and economic development organizations are targeting innovation as a tool for generating jobs and investment.

Innovation can be viewed as a dynamic process with these two attributes:

  • Science and technology are always advancing and create potential for new technical solutions.
  • The needs and wants of customers continue to evolve and create opportunities for new products and services.

Understanding how these two dynamics may merge and intersect, provide targets for creating new, innovative products and services that deliver the “wow” effect to customers.

Many companies are generating profits by using various approaches for commercializing new technologies into innovative products and services. For the Turner Center, successful technology commercialization is a function of smart technology development and deep business insight that requires three basic elements:

  • A management process for fostering common areas between technology development and business disciplines.
  • Multi-disciplinary people skills to envision how new technical solutions can be transformed into new products and services that deliver large benefits to customers.
  • A strategy for initiating and managing various individual technology commercialization projects that reflect this convergence of technology development and business disciplines.