When researchers or innovators develop a new solution — a better material, a cleaner process, a smarter system — the first instinct is often to think about scaling it up. How do we build this at large scale? Who will use it? Where do we find the money?
But in most cases, the right question comes a step earlier: is this solution ready for commercialisation?
From research to reality: why commercialisation matters
We define impact as something that actually happens in the real world — not just something published in a report. That means someone needs to take your solution, bring it to market, and make it work in real conditions.
That doesn’t happen automatically. Especially not in clean energy, circular economy, or other complex systems.
Commercialization maturity or investor readiness is a way of gauging how close an innovation is to being investable, usable, and ready for the next step. From about TRL 4–5 onwards, technical progress needs to be matched with reflection on market fit, societal acceptance, and potential business models. Otherwise, projects risk hitting a wall at TRL 6, when investors expect to see not just technology, but also a credible path to use.
Scaling is staged — and iterative
Scaling isn’t a single leap — it’s a phased, iterative process. A typical pathway might move from lab experiments to a small pilot, then to a pilot line, onwards to larger pilots integrated with industrial processes, and eventually to a First-of-a-Kind (FOAK) commercial facility.
At every step, you test and validate the technology under the new technical conditions, environments, or scales. Then comes demonstration: showing and testing with potential users, partners, and investors that the solution actually works in practice. Together, these cycles build trust, reduce risk, develop your solution further and prepare the ground for the next scale-up.
The closer you get to large-scale deployment, especially for investment intensive deployment, the higher the bar becomes. It’s no longer enough to show technical feasibility: investors and partners will also look for a credible business case, clarity on intellectual property, and evidence of market demand. Without those, projects can remain stuck in the pilot stage — technically proven, but not investable.
How do you build investor readiness?
Just as your technology advances step by step, so should the thinking around how it will be used in the real world. Three areas need to grow alongside the technical work:
- Market understanding – Who might use the solution, and why? What problem does it solve for them, and how urgent is that problem? Even at early stages, it helps to talk to potential users and test the assumptions.
- Business development – How will this solution reach real customers? That includes questions like: what’s the business model, who will supply the raw material, who are the first buyers, what partners are needed, and how could it be manufactured, distributed – put “on the shelf” for someone to purchase?
- Societal acceptance – How does the solution fit with regulation, sustainability requirements, or wider expectations in society? Clean energy and circular economy solutions often face questions of safety, environmental impact, or fairness — answering these early builds trust.
Thinking about these dimensions doesn’t have to be complicated. Even simple steps — a conversation with a user, a sketch of a business model, or an early check against policy requirements — can make a big difference later. The key is to let these aspects grow alongside the technology, so that by the time you reach large-scale demonstration, you’re not just technically ready but also market- and society-ready.
How CLIC supports this journey
We believe commercialisation planning shouldn’t be left to the end of a project. It should be part of the thinking from the very beginning — even in early-stage research.
That’s why we help projects to:
- Understand the real-world steps between lab and market
- Build simple exploitation plans that outline what comes next
- Identify the right partners, including users, funders, and investors
And through our work in large initiatives like the CETPartnership, we help build pathways that connect innovation with the funding and demonstration support it needs.
Because great ideas don’t scale on their own — technology and business must grow together hand in hand.