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What is technology entrepreneurship?
To define technology commercialization, we must begin by highlighting the difference between
research and commercialization. Research is about discovery and adding to the knowledge base.
Commercialization is about moving research/technology from the lab to marketplace—profitably.
There are a number of ways to commercialize technology: licensing, partnering, or selling your
product or idea to others who will go on to commercialize it. For the purposes of this competition,
we’re focusing on technology entrepreneurship—the act of you and your team taking an invention
all the way, or at least part of the way, to market yourselves.
Technology vs. regular entrepreneurship
There’s a difference between regular entrepreneurship and technology entrepreneurship. The
technology entrepreneur must succeed at two major, but fundamentally different, tasks: ensuring
that the technology actually works in the target customer’s environment, and being able to sell it
at a profit. Regular entrepreneurship typically worries only about the second part.
Lifestyle vs. high-growth businesses
In general, there are two types of organizations you can create as a technology entrepreneur:
a lifestyle business or a high-growth business. A lifestyle business is a venture that generates
$1 million or more per year in revenues and has no intent or strategy to grow rapidly. Lifestyle
businesses are typically unlikely to generate interest from outside, “professional” investors like
angels or venture capitalists—they don’t have enough potential for generating significant wealth.
Why would anyone start a lifestyle business? You might if you want to be your own boss, set your
own schedule, and are willing to compromise on the big payoff in favor of potentially lucrative
financial rewards and greater control. Lifestyle businesses are a very valid option.…they are really
one end of a continuum.
The other type of venture is a high-growth business. A high-growth business has the potential to
generate great wealth, and is the kind of high-risk, high-reward proposition that venture capitalists
invest in. Examples of high-growth businesses are Dell, Genzyme, EMC, Amgen, and Biogen-Idec. |
