Seeding and Harvesting the Innovation Gap: Linking Technology to Social and Market Needs

The Technology Innovation Mapping (TIM) Tool assists commercialization efforts and students studying product development and technology commercialization by linking the features of a technology to specific social needs (a term in broad perspective that includes technology commercialization used both for profit and not-for-profit applications), thus addressing the innovation gap between laboratory research and business incubators. This paper further develops the methodology; it summarizes the TIM Tool method and expands upon the TIM Tool to better capture the commercialization process for innovative technologies. The paper uses the application of a nano-scale drug delivery technology (advanced by a graduate student team) as a technology commercialization example.