Sunday 27 March 2011
The Commercialisation Blueprint: A freely accessible online tool for innovators seeking commercialisation guidance
Back in August 2010, the AIC brought you news of our Commercialisation RoadMap – an internal tool we developed to provide a framework to walk our customers through, and to provide an empirical method of documenting progress along the commercialisation journey.
The tool, based on a stage-gate model, visualises the commercialisation process through the graphical representation of the journey and provides structure and continual assessment capabilities. 
This enables innovators, entrepreneurs, research organisations, government departments and businesses to determine their progress along the commercialisation pathway.
Significant interest was expressed by a number of our clients, which contributed to our recent decision to “open source” the tool to enable all innovators and their mentors to access the content freely.
Thus the Commercialisation Blueprint was born - a freely available, open source online tool designed to guide innovators through the commercialisation process.
The Commercialisation Blueprint
One of the key challenges for anyone attempting to take new opportunities to market is the issue of ‘what to do next’.
The Commercialisation Blueprint equips innovators to overcome this challenge by providing a step by step guide to each stage in the process and provides the capability to evaluate, track, monitor and report progress.
The Commercialisation Blueprint is a comprehensive suite of software, tools, guides and templates that answer the “how to?” and “what next?” questions that entrepreneurs should, but only sometimes do, consider on their path to market.
The AIC supports the freely available Commercialisation Blueprint with a commercially available comprehensive support package which includes commercialisation workshops and guidance on how best to integrate this tool to maximise outcomes.
The Commercialisation Blueprint helps to solve challenges that emerge when commercialising an opportunity, and supports innovators and their mentors in addressing these issues - thus enabling ideas and business plans to evolve more successfully.
The Commercialisation Blueprint can help improve return on investment by reducing the risks associated with taking an opportunity to market. It does this by highlighting potential challenges and risks at an early stage in the commercialisation process, enabling a decisive, proactive response.
The Commercialisation Blueprint features:
The Commercialisation Blueprint has a wide range of features which support innovators in the commercialisation process:
Dashboard
Presents a visual overview of the commercialisation path to market where progress can be viewed at a 
glance.
Guidance
Provides detailed goals, actions and deliverables at each stage with corresponding guides and templates that explain what needs to be done next.
Helpful Resources
Provides assistance at each stage as and when required (e.g. business planning, intellectual property etc).
Evaluation Criteria
Stage-specific questionnaires which bring to attention all the factors that should be considered.
Key benefits:
- Accessibility irrespective of geographic location;
- Drives outcomes to improve the probability of success of opportunities;
- Provides a management framework for mentors, SME’s and entrepreneurs;
- Provides a point of reference to monitor progress;
- Increases efficiency, manageability and output of commercialisation activities;
- Facilitates fast failure – minimising the impact of failed opportunities by making decisions early;
- Increases awareness of the commercial viability of an opportunity forcing an early decision of whether or not to proceed with a project;
- Facilitates decision-making so that scarce resources can be focused on opportunities that are more likely to succeed.
To find out more or to access the Commercialisation Blueprint, please visit: www.ausicom.com/blueprint
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