University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth, and MassMEP Collaborate in Technology Acceleration Pilot
By Greg King, Project Manager, MassMEP
Technology and innovation are playing increasingly critical roles in the growth and competitiveness needs of the nation’s manufacturers. Linking these manufacturers’ needs with technologies available from our universities and research laboratories is a challenging and growing focus of the NIST MEP.
Based on the scientifically proven Eureka! Winning Ways Programthat is helping Massachusetts manufacturers and manufacturers across the country radically grow top-line sales with measurably smarter choices for growth, MassMEP, NIST MEP, and Eureka! Ranch® have introduced a new Growth Based Strategy Pilot Program at the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth Advanced Technology Manufacturing Center.
Laws of Marketing Physics
The focus of the pilot program is to eliminate the barriers between the commercial and research sides of the innovation continuum. Ten inventors from the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth and Lowell campuses participated in the pilot workshop. Inventors were brought through a set of challenging interactive sessions that introduced them to techniques for translating their respective technologies from "techno-speak" to simple easy to understand language, language designed for a grade school student to understand. Says Ken Bloomer of Eureka Ranch, "If you can not clearly articulate your idea in writing then you have virtually NO CHANCE of success."
Research from PDMA indicates a 3.7 to 1 increase in commercialization success for ideas clearly articulated. The multi-step process, utilizing the Deming circle — Plan, Do, Study, Act — moves through sessions of "Individual Insights," "Paired Ideation," "Team Feedback," and finally "Individual Authorship," providing each of the respective participants with a one page, simple to understand description of their invention.
Individual Insights Paired Ideation
Team Feedback Individual Authorship
Once the inventors completed their final draft, their invention description was submitted to a diagnostic program called Merwyn. The Merwyn program measures an invention’s probability of success for commercialization. Merwyn, with an 88% rate of predicting success, measures and scores each invention against the Laws of Marking Physics :
Overt Benefit – helps drive customer interest
Real Reason to Believe – increases sales closing rates
Dramatic Difference – increases profitability
The inventors are provided with a dashboard describing the probability of success for their invention, identifying an overall score suggesting the idea is a "Wow," a "Go," "Needs Work," or "No." In addition each of the three elements — Overt Benefit, Real Reason to Believe, and Dramatic Difference — are rated on its strength or weakness in the articulated description, offering the inventor an opportunity to refine and articulate those points more clearly thus improving the forecast for success.
The objective of this unique pilot program is to lay the groundwork for building a repository of viable technologies available for the nation’s manufacturers to purchase or license for commercialization.
In addition to articulating their respective inventions into more understandable terminology and language, the inventors are asked to make educated assumptions about customers, sales, and financials. These questions are put through a model that prepares an "Assumptions and Fair Market Royalty Estimates" sheet that can be used by prospective buyers to quickly review the potential commercial viability of the invention.
The inventors that participated in this workshop and their respective inventions, once articulated in easy to understand language, yielded some of the top scores recorded in the 15 pilot projects conducted across the country. Each of the inventors came away from the exercise with a clearer understanding of how to describe their inventions in a manner that will create customer pull, remembering that clearly articulated ideas have an 85% probability of successful commercialization.
According to Bill Lyndon, CVIP Licensing Associate, UMass Boston and Dartmouth, "Excellent methodology engages the researchers and inventors to understand their audience and how to approach them. I would also recommend it to tech transfer personnel, as it will help them connect inventors and commercializers more easily."
If you are interested in learning how this unique process is being utilized by companies across the US to generate a pipeline of measurably successful ideas for Top Line Growth contact: Greg King at [email protected] or call 508 831-7020.
