The four entrepreneurial structures
You don't assess an established SME, a startup searching for a model, a deep tech project and the valorization of a research result in the same way. Identify the one that matches your project — it determines your framework.
A formal (or formalizing) commercial business that sells an existing product or service to identified customers. It is not searching for a model: it runs a model whose viability is already known.
Who it is for: Trade, services, crafts or basic manufacturing, with paying customers and regular revenue (or revenue targeted in the short term).
A temporary organisation designed to search for a repeatable and scalable business model under conditions of extreme uncertainty. It searches for a model where an established company executes one.
Who it is for: An innovative project aiming for rapid growth, whose product-market fit is not yet proven; digital, physical or hybrid solution.
A project whose innovation rests on a significant scientific or engineering advance. It pushes the frontier of what is possible and applies science to the physical world, not only to the digital one.
Who it is for: Advanced materials, artificial intelligence, biotechnology, robotics, photonics, quantum… Most often a physical product, patents, a long cycle (valley of death, TRL 4–7).
Transfer of a scientific result from a research organisation to the market, through licensing, a spin-off or contract research. The technology transfer office (TTO) is the central actor.
Who it is for: Researchers and university labs or public institutes seeking to valorise a patent or a result; issues of intellectual property, transferability and the Nagoya Protocol.
How it works
An identification form characterizes your project, then the four structures are presented so you can choose your framework.
You answer pillar by pillar. Your answers are kept — nothing is lost.
Maturity radar, detailed pillar-by-pillar reading and financing guidance — downloadable.