Growth Strategies: Identifying Opportunities in Market Trends. Market trends and market needs are important to determine the commercialization opportunities for innovations. Unless the innovation fulfills a need, there is no market for it. As researchers and faculty or student entrepreneurs, balancing between the dynamics of market trends and needs, research resources, and competences can be a challenge. Research institutions and centers managers need to be equipped with tools and skills that help understand and analyze the market trends and needs to provide the appropriate guidance to identifying the commercial opportunities, secure a competitive edge, and obtain funding. In order to accomplish this, managers need to assess market readiness, which provides complementary perspectives on innovation and technological development, enhances market-led innovation, and improves market orientation for technology-led research. Aspects of strategy, markets, and technology are covered to identify what spurs growth across a variety of industries, and how to spot it at the grassroots level.
New Venture Creation. Early stage technologies face multiple valleys of death along the development path way. With industry being increasingly risk averse, universities and foundations have increased their participation in providing gap and seed funding for innovations and their associated start-up companies. This course provides an in-depth look at the drivers, challenges, and the benefits that these types of funding programs face. In addition, how these programs operate is reflects the universities goals as well as the needs of the entrepreneurs. Successful models are described, along with best practices, and how to adopt such programs for the local ecosystem is explored.
The Essentials of Commercialization for Small and Medium Enterprises. Strategies to manage and reduce the risk associated with product launch need to be addressed early in the process. This includes marketing and how to transition from R&D into production with the aid of concurrent engineering so marketing and R&D/production are integrated. The participants also learn how to examine risk factors for transitioning.
Managing Intellectual Property for Small and Medium Enterprises. It is very important for small and medium enterprises to manage their intellectual property very carefully. The costs associated with patents and trademarks can be astronomical, with little return on the investment. Participants will learn how to optimize their intellectual property and assets. The course will cover the differences between the various forms of intellectual property and tailoring the approach for product development and market entry.
