Getting inventions out of labs and to market

The region has a wealth of innovators and inventors. In both private and federal labs, it’s easy to imagine thousands of fantastic inventions ready to be part of the next big company, but the transition isn’t always easy, and not all inventions are created equal.

When it comes to inventions built in labs across the D.C. region, “the idea is that you would ultimately commercialize them and bring them to the market, and someone would use them,” said Bob Smith, Director of the Innovation Commercialization Assistance Program of Virginia at George Mason University.

However, not every invention or idea coming from a lab automatically founds a company.

“Quite often, research programs say they want you to build an X… an inventor might go out and invent X. That doesn’t mean X is applicable 35 other places, but it does mean that there may be innovations as part of that invention that could be used in other places,” said Smith. The trick, then, is not to just invent, but to innovate.

While many tech transfer offices focus on inventing something and then trying to find a market for it, Smith’s approach is to ask what customers need. “Every time I have used a customer-centric approach, and looked at what a customer needed, and then developed the solution, I’ve succeeded. Every time I started with the technology… and said, why won’t these people take it? I’ve failed,” Smith told What’s Working in Washington.

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For the D.C. region, Smith wants his program to teach area startups how to succeed. “We’ll bring in a little bit of expertise, from people who know how to do these processes… as opposed to completely distributing the know-how, and letting it operate completely independently,” he said.

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