The 4 steps of our market validation analysis

As all of you know, we develop services for supporting technology transfer operations in research-based institutions such as universities and research centers. After a year, we have talked to more than 200 of these organizations to better understand their needs, their pains, and how could we develop a service that fits their demands.

TTOs are responsible not only for the commercialization and licensing out of patents and technologies, but also spin-off creation, contract management, writing technology offers, and many other complex bureaucratic tasks.  Furthermore, we have noticed that many universities TTOs are usually understaffed, considering the great number of technologies they receive, which normally are from completely different fields. Apart from this set of tasks, we cannot forget that they are also responsible for maintaining and creating new collaborations and relationships with industry actors and external companies. To create these connections is extremely time-consuming and many TTOs do not have left enough time to invest in this. The result of this is a research-based institution with the research, contractual and legal capabilities, but disconnected to the industry, lacking entry points in companies and struggling to validate the need for their technologies in the market. 

To address this issue, at Viromii we have developed a service that alleviates these pain points. This service has the objective of presenting a given technology to decision-makers at the most relevant companies with potential to acquire this technology. During the project, we aim not only to validate the commercial value of a technology or close a licensing deal, we create bridges and close the gap between the industry and the TTOs. The process consists of 4 steps:

Additionally, we have seen that besides checking on the interest of potential licensees, we have been able to communicate the capabilities of the research groups for future technology developments; we have broadened the network of contacts in companies of the TTOs; and with this information we have been able to device more actionable strategies on where to extend the patents and which patents have more potential to be patented. 

We hope you found this interesting, and we are happy to have a meeting and give you more info if you feel this could be a good fit for your research institute or university.