What is a Research-to-Business-project?
Research to Business, or R2B, is a Business Finland funded project aimed to evaluate the commercial potential of a research-based innovation, enabling the team to take their first steps on the commercialization journey. In other words, this is still a project, safely nestled within Tampere University, without the pressures of a real startup, and the support of all the university services and full use of the laboratory spaces, offices and so on still at our disposal.
Research to Business funding is intended for public research organizations for projects in which research groups and researchers aim to develop their research into new business and to commercialize their research results.
However, by the end of this project, the aim is that our innovation would be at a stage that we could spin off from the university and start our own business.
R2B-project vs. startup?
In my personal opinion, the major difference between an R2B project compared to a “regular” startup is that research-based innovations tend to approach the market from the “wrong” direction (from business perspective) compared to regular startups.
PROBLEM-based approach: Normally, a startup founder has found a real-world problem, which is painful to a large number of people, and decides to develop a solution to that problem. The startup is build around this customer pain point.
SOLUTION-based approach: With a research-based innovation, however, something new and interesting has been found in the lab, which has shown potential for a certain use-case. The team does not have any market intelligence yet and possibly no idea who the customers could be, who would benefit from the innovation most.
The team must therefore start their journey by exploring potential customer segments and try to figure out which of these potential customers have a problem their solution could fix!
Shifting from an academic mindset to the business world
In academic projects the researchers often aim to discover pieces of information that are still missing from the big picture – whether it be solving the scary puzzle of Alzheimer’s disease, or developing new imaging method for studying said disease. In a way, this can be a similar situation as with founding a startup, where previously known solutions are not good enough so the startup founder sets out to develop a new solution to an existing problem.
The differences become apparent when we look at how the problems are approached. To be successful as a startup, you must, at all times be in close contact with your customers, hear their feedback and work with them to develop your solution. Essentially, you don’t own your own idea but majority of it comes from your customers – if you don’t offer what the customer wants, they won’t buy it, and your business is as good as dead.
In academia however, simply put aim is to create data. Research groups are generally not developing something to sell, but the aim is to develop new knowledge and new understanding on complex topics and previously unexplored questions. This knowledge and the results will always be publicly available for anyone to use, and the work is aimed to benefit the humanity as a whole.
So, switching your brain from highly detail- and results-oriented view to a “who needs our innovation and who’s willing to pay for it” – mindset can be challenging. But not impossible! R2B – projects are expected to hire a commercialization-oriented Business Champion to support their expert research team. The team will learn together, and push the research-based innovation towards the market.
Research based innovations and their expert teams have very high value due to their ability and readiness to solve complex problems that cannot be solved with current technologies.
It is not an easy road, getting ready to spin off a deep-tech startup, but we all need to keep pushing to bring these innovations from the labs all the way to the consumers.
Wish us luck!
Cheers,
Sari
Commercialization specialist at Team INTENSE