Technology Commercialization—What Is it?
Technology commercialization is the process of moving technology from its conceptual stage to the marketplace. Commercializing new technology is a difficult, resource-consuming process. Over the years, many innovators have attempted to commercialize their technologies. In some cases, these efforts proved successful, with the developers sometimes reaping huge monetary rewards.

More often than not, however, the road to commercial success has been paved with thousands of failed attempts. In most cases, these failures involve technologies that were rushed to market before anyone looked objectively at the issue of market potential. If only we had a nickel for every time an innovator has said, "Everyone will want one of these!" and "There is absolutely no competition for this technology."

The Value of Market Research
Nothing is more important in the commercialization of new technology than learning early on whether there is sufficient market potential to warrant pursuing the technology.

If an objective assessment determines that an innovative, new technology has strong market potential:

the developer will know whether to invest additional time, effort, and resources;
the target market will be identified, thereby facilitating the developer’s work with the target market to ensure the technology meets the market’s needs;
sales practices and appropriate distribution channels will be identified, providing the developer with insight into how the technology will move to its final end users;
the developer will learn more about the market position of existing and sometimes competing technologies;
market-entry barriers and opportunities will be identified, together with strategies for how to overcome or take advantage of these factors.

Seldom do technology developers disagree with this point. But all this agreement usually leads to just a literature search—e.g., the Internet; electronic databases; government reports; industry periodicals and papers. These resources can lead to a reasonable picture of a market’s overall size and make-up, but it falls far short of addressing the key question: How will this technology be received by the market? And without addressing this question, the developer has no way of factually determining the subject technology's potential share of the market.

The MarkeTech Research Center fills this void by helping clients objectively assess the market potential for their technologies. Since 1992, the Center has completed detailed market assessments on nearly 300 innovations (click here for a list of sample technologies) in a broad array of technology areas:

Renewable Energy—New designs, systems, and equipment in solar thermal, photovoltaics, small hydro, biomass, fuel cells
Electronics—Innovative approaches to leak detection, sensors, laser TV, energy-load management, fluorescent lighting
Manufacturing—Unique systems and equipment designed for improved efficiencies in the production of textiles, glass, ceramics, paper and forest products, metal alloys
Law Enforcement—Novel advancements in night vision and less-than-lethal technologies, as well as in blast-initiation devices, walk-through metal detector testing, and automated light survey systems
Agriculture—Enhancements to improving operations and efficiencies in aquaculture, harvesting, irrigation
Road Construction—New materials, equipment, and designs for lower costs and improved performance
Building Construction—Innovative approaches to enhanced performance of windows, wall systems, lighting, roofing, insulation
Oil and Gas—Efficiency enhancements in the areas of drilling, pipe cleaning and maintenance, transportation, instrumentation, and end use of products.
Consumer Products—Innovations in air conditioning, refrigeration, waste management, and water-savings systems

Having completed assessments ranging in scope from a few days to several months, our research team is well experienced in identifying and securing the information technology developers need to make wise commercialization decisions.