1
What does commercialisation mean in practice?
In the narrow sense, commercialisation is the transfer of a technology from research into commercial use: licensing, spin-out, joint development or direct sale. In practice the term covers a wider and less orderly activity, which is the sustained attempt to find the form in which a capability is worth paying for.
The distinction matters because the two are managed differently. A licensing transaction is a negotiation with a known counterparty. Finding the commercial form of a capability is an inquiry with an unknown one, and it is closer to research than to sales.
2
Why does the problem statement come before the product?
Because a problem stated loosely admits any solution, and therefore permits no judgement about whether a particular one is good. “Firms struggle with unstructured documents” cannot be evaluated. “A claims handler spends forty minutes per file locating three figures that determine the reserve, and is measured on files closed per day” can be evaluated, priced and tested.
A precise statement also identifies the buyer. The second version names a role, a measure and a cost. It tells you who feels the problem, who is paid to solve it, and what the alternative currently costs. Most projects that fail late failed at this point, and did so silently.
3
What is the commercial interface?
Many clients do not yet know what their problem, or their opportunity, is. Someone must sit between the client’s account of the situation and the technical work: originating the relationship, leading the early discussions, and converting an interest into a requirement that can be built against.
That is the role we occupy. It is not a sales function, because at the point of the first conversation there is usually nothing yet to sell. It is not project management either, since the work is to establish what is worth attempting. Research, technical origination and development are carried out by our research partner, and the separation is deliberate. The person establishing what the client needs should not also be the person whose existing work would be most convenient to supply.
4
What happens in successive rounds of clarification?
The requirement is not obtained in one meeting. It emerges through several passes, each narrower than the last. The first establishes the situation in the client’s own terms. The second tests which parts of it actually cost money. The third proposes a statement of the problem back to the client, in writing, for correction.
That third pass does most of the work. Presented with a precise written account of their own problem, clients correct it, and the correction is more informative than anything volunteered earlier. Two or three rounds are usually enough to produce something worth building against, or to establish that nothing is.
5
When should a business decline to build?
When the problem cannot be stated precisely enough to be judged. When nobody named is accountable for the cost it creates. When the alternative is free and adequate. When the buyer would need to change a process that is protected for reasons unrelated to efficiency. And when the client is interested in the capability rather than the outcome, which is a request for a demonstration rather than a purchase.
Declining is a commercial act rather than a failure. The cost of building the wrong thing is not the development budget. It is the year in which the organisation was occupied and the questions that were not asked.
6
How is the research side handled?
Separately, and by people who do that work continuously. Research, technical origination and development are carried out by our research partner. We remain the commercial interface throughout: stating the problem, holding the requirement, and reporting to the client.
The arrangement has one further merit. It keeps the assessment of whether something should be built at arm’s length from the enthusiasm of the people who would build it.