First things first, what do you mean with commercialisation?
Commercialisation is commonly understood as the process of moving a technology or innovative concept from the idea stage to the marketplace. In the context of the EIC Accelerator, it focuses on all the activities that are at TRL9 and revolve around bringing your ready product out in the market with full-scale operations.
A good commercialisation plan should tackle the following points:
- potential need for the company new product/ technology/ service/ method/ process
- product’s commercial value
|
Questions:
- How do you know there is need or there will be a need for your product?
- At which price do you expect to be able to sell your product?
|
You can ask
Can the users you will target be identified?
- Conceptually
- Geographically
- Functionally
- Other aspects
What are the needs of the users you will satisfy?
- Is there more than one set of needs? Per user/group of users?
- What are the priorities of these needs?
- Is it possible to prioritize the needs? Will an additional resource need to be utilized?
|
|
Questions:
- Do you know which demand to expect?
- What is the size of the market?
- What is the Total Addressable Market (TAM) for this product?
- What is the source of information for that?
- Were surveys performed for this?
- What is your target, in respect to the TAM?
- Is there a need in educating the market? If so, how?
|
- geographical distribution
Questions:
- What is the geographical distribution of the market and your product? Will this involve import/export activities? If so, to what extent and what are the expected costs? (Consider also tax and shipping issues).
|
|
Questions:
- Who are your (direct/indirect) competitors?
- What are their shortcomings?
- How does your project address these shortcomings and provide a better solution?
- What are the product’s advantages in comparison to the competition?
- Are there any market barriers (legal, economical, language, etc.)?
|
- any barriers that may prevent the product from reaching its goals
|
Questions:
- Are there any market barriers (legal, economical, language, regulations, etc.)? If so, how will these be bridged?
|
- “go to market” activities (sales / marketing / supply / distribution)
Questions:
- Discuss the go-to-market strategy: what is the sales strategy? Directly to clients? Through marketing channels? Online? Offline?
- What are the marketing strategies? For example: events, conferences (booths), publications, presentations, website, liaising with key partners, etc.
- What is the revenue model?
- Will the product be sold?
- Will the product be available free of charge but earn income from advertising and/or for selling data gathered?
- If you don’t sell directly to end users, do you intend to use licensing or other business models?
- Are post-sale services a money making element?
- If you make money from sales: what is your pricing model and how did you choose it?
- Is the business model scalable?
- In how many countries do you already have presence with clients/ distributors/ staff/ offices?
- Are you commercialising with your own salesforce/ distributors/ partners/ the internet?
- Consider using different commercial channels for the different geographical areas in order to accelerate market penetration.
- You may need to have a separate approach per market segment/country.
- Know the different countries’ export regulation and licensing laws (do not forget about foreign import regulations). Engage with expert counselling.
- If there will be a need to localise the product – make sure to explain how it will be changed to meet local conditions.
- What are the (other) funding sources of the company / product / project?
- What is the supply chain?
|
While you will tackle these topics throughout the document in different parts, when you are requested in the EIC Accelerator template section 2.2 to describe commercialisation activities (TRL9) even if you apply for grant only, you must concisely describe how you will take the product (for which some R&D activity is performed in the Accelerator, along with some necessary pre-commercialisation activities like market-validation or validation for market replication in other geographical areas) to the customer.
If applying also for equity a rather detailed breakdown of activites in the post-grant years will make evaluators confident that you know your market inside out and are in good shape for success.
Intellectual Property is also a very important aspect of any product development. In Horizon 2020 it is addressed explicitly both in the guidelines and in the consortium agreement. When crafting the commercialisation plan for your Horizon 2020 project, it is important to address and discuss this issue as well.
o do so, begin by asking the following questions:
- What is your IP status and strategy?
- What are your IPR assets?
- Answer may include: patents, copyright and related rights, trade marks, know-how, trade secrets, industrial designs, designs, drawings, reports, methods of research and developments, documented data, and description of inventions and discoveries.
- What is your strategy for knowledge management and protection of results?
- What are your measures to ensure commercial exploitation?
- How will joint ownership be treated?