Assessing Technology Readiness for Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning based Innovations

Every innovation begins with an idea. To make this idea a valuable novelty worth investing in requires identification, assessment and management of innovation projects under two primary aspects: The Market Readiness Level (MRL) measures if there is actually a market willing to buy the envisioned product. The Technology Readiness Level (TRL) measures the capability to produce the product. The READINESSnavigator is a state of the art software tool that supports innovators and investors in managing these aspects of innovation projects. The existing technology readiness levels neatly model the production of physical goods but fall short in assessing data based products such as those based on Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML). In this paper we describe our extension of the READINESSnavigator with AI and ML relevant readiness levels and evaluate its usefulness in the context of 25 different AI projects.