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Turning an idea into a business: how to create value with a technology?

The creation of profitable products and/or processes is one of the greatest challenges facing businesses, in the present economical context.

The recognition of Innovation as a true source of value creation gains increased importance, mainly for SMEs, by offering them competitive advantage and the means to answer to the internationalization process, in safer and more effective way.

How can we create value with a technology?

A technology must be analyzed not only regarding its degree of technological innovation, but also through the diversity of factors that can facilitate, or hinder, its commercialization, such as: the positioning of the technology that aims to reach the market and its competitive advantages considering competing technologies, the existence of legal barriers, the different types of potential markets and their segments, the business potential for growth and the team, as well as the political and economic conditions, amongst many others.

The success of the commercialization will depend on the degree of the technology development, its intellectual property protection, the availability of resources for the process of commercialization, the existence of market(s) for goods or services to be produced with the developed technology, the expected return on the investment made, the existence of interested licensees or buyers, with technological and organizational capacity to assimilate, acquire and/or adapt the technology.

Thus, to allow effectiveness in the process of value creation through a technology, companies should guide their applied research according to their position in the market, avoiding investment in redundant research and development activities.

In this context, technology surveillance emerges as an innovative tool that allows a company, by means of targeted research, to know the technological and scientific developments actually taking place in the technological area of interest, at a national and international level.

Also, concerning the intangible assets, including those of a technological nature, they must be regularly analyzed and monitored by means of constant surveillance, in order to represent an added value to the company and to assume a competitive and differentiator character, in the innovation process.

Carmen Sánchez-Puelles