Research laboratories produce scientific findings and 'raw' lab technologies in the form of demos or "technology prototypes".
Lab technology is often entirely orthogonal to the product that will emerge from the process of successful technology transfer.
Nevertheless, we see many labs spending huge amounts of money and effort to investigate the marketability of their technology prototype as a product.
But a (lab) technology prototype is rather an aspect of a product still to be discovered.
A research
finding is NOT a product; a research result - in due time - may become part of
one or more different product.
Transfer: Usage-informed Prototyping, the process of 'discovering the product(s)'
The technology transfer process is really a process of
identifying and choosing between promising ways of "packaging" the
research result with other emerging and mature technologies into something that
provides discernible value to people using them.
Usage informed prototyping adds value to the
technology, transforming unfit technologies into fit ones. Some resulting product
concepts point to market opportunities that are outside the main stream of the
technology creator's primary business, that is, they could become likely
candidates for licensing.
Most interesting systems need to evolve during
development - and after deployment. Watching an emerging technology in the
hands of users is a powerful source of inspiration, made possible by robust
prototyping of the [user experience] design.
Pre-Productizing: Designing Product Concepts
Define the major user affordances of the technology
Identify and analyze plausible and sufficiently important usage domains where such affordances are likely to be important.
Build and design a robust technology prototype to be deployed in the most promising usage domain.
Watching an emerging technology in the
hands of users, in a process of "Constructive Deployment".
Discover product and service opportunities from observation of real behavior.
Observe early contingencies in the usage environment that can be deftly translated into opportunities.
(a) Survey: If any prior work exists on
markets, competitive analyses, etc., the survey will leverage such knowledge
but also complement it by applying a
usage-centered analysis.
(b) Concept Building: provides you with a data based value proposition for one or more
re-configurations of the technology, provides a "sanity check" with respect
to usage impact of such product concepts (may go direct to (d))
(c) Constructive Deployment: In return you
will get both an improved product concept and a substantiated value proposition
with data from before and after. ... It is much beneficial for the
final product concept when the study of the work practices has impact on the
(re-) design and packaging of the technology.
(d) Pre-product: improved product concept, substantiated value proposition, usage-validated
requirement specification (and research data) for handing over the technology to licensees or transferring it
to product development & marketing.
