From Lab Bench to Business: A Practical Guide for Researchers Aspiring to Commercialise Their Work

Pursuing a PhD at a leading, well-funded university is a remarkable privilege, offering the opportunity to contribute to advances at the frontier of human knowledge and ability. Typically, such research culminates in impactful publications, an engaging thesis, or secures a coveted postdoctoral position. Occasionally, though less frequently than one might hope, research discoveries can be developed into valuable business ventures. Yet this transition is fraught with hurdles. Beyond the obvious challenges such as lack of interest, opportunity costs, and insufficient funding, the fundamental divide between academia and industry means that translating academic research into commercially viable products and services is road few researchers choose to travel.

While industry-funded programmes exist to support researchers in commercialising their ideas or licensing intellectual property, their reach is limited and often aligned with specific interests. Consequently, many researchers never seriously consider the commercial potential of their findings or explore practical applications beyond academia. Although I do not wish to downplay the complexities of bringing innovations from the laboratory to the marketplace, I aim to outline a simple roadmap for those keen to embark on this journey.

Step 1: Identifying and Defining Your Market

Let’s imagine a researcher in microbiology discovers compelling evidence that the presence of a certain microbe, at or above a measurable threshold, predicts colon cancer risk in healthy adults. The most obvious use case is to develop a predictive test for physicians or individuals to assess their risk. Quantifying the market involves examining cancer epidemiology, sales figures from existing screening tests, and projected trends in colon cancer incidence. Start broad by identifying the Total Available Market (TAM)—all adults at risk of colon cancer. Next, narrow to the Total Obtainable Market (TOM)—those actively seeking screening. Finally, define the Serviceable Obtainable Market (SOM) which in this case could be the same as TOM or different, for example, individuals undergoing colonoscopies (assuming your test requires direct samples). Utilise published data on disease incidence, screening numbers, and company revenues to estimate market size. Another market that is not immediately obvious but could be worth exploring is that of preventive therapeutics. One can look for published research that might suggest that reducing or eliminating the said microbe from the gut with the help of certain drugs could lower one’s risk of colon cancer or help cure it. Even if such research does not yet exist, one can still think of this as a possible market that further investment could unlock. Thus, an initial thesis can be made to support the scope of applicability and an estimate of the size of the business opportunity that flows from it.

Step 2: Identifying Unmet Needs

Once the potential target market had broadly been defined, we need to think about what unmet needs exist that could be served by the product we create. In this case, since screening tests exist for colon cancer, we need to look at things like:

• How effective are the existing screening tests (false positive and negative rates)?

• What are the main hurdles for their use, e.g. invasiveness, required frequency, need for specialised equipment or analytics facilities?

• At what rate do existing tests detect cancer early enough that subsequent interventions are able to significantly improve outcomes?

Such questions can not only help get a sense of the obtainable market share but also help guide the product development roadmap and help us more clearly define what a “minimum viable product” would look like. Unless our discovery is able to offer tangible, meaningful improvement over the existing standard of care, it may not be a viable business idea. At the same time, it helps one determine what product characteristics are needed to have a minimum viable product (MVP) which can then inform additional validation studies or modifications to product design that can help us get to an MVP. Being able to demonstrate a clear roadmap to MVP is a critical requirement for any business plan to be taken seriously by investors.

Step 3: Assessing the Business Environment

With a business idea, defined market, unmet needs, and a roadmap to MVP, it’s time to consider external factors:

• Competition: Today’s standard may not be the standard of five years hence. There may be others developing products similar to yours and may have a better offering or be further down the path of business development. These are important things to consider because when you get to the stage of seeking investors, they will care deeply about how competitive your business idea is.

• Regulation: Broadly, this refers to the set of conditions that need to be met and rules that need to be followed to market products and services legally. These can vary by country, region, and type of solution (drug, diagnostic test, medical device, app, etc.). This can have a significant impact on your product development roadmap. For example, if our test involves consuming a substance to stimulate microbe growth, regulators may demand extensive safety trials.

• Market Access: Since healthcare is not directly paid for by the consumer in most markets, one needs to contend with “payors” who are the main decision makers about what gets bought and at what price. This means that when bringing a product to market one needs to have a clear payor value proposition that articulates how using the product provides beneficial health outcomes and cost savings that are better than the standard of care at a justifiable price point.

• Intellectual Property (IP) Landscape: Doing a thorough patent search for prior art and securing any IP that can later provide some competitive advantage could mean the difference between the ability to secure meaningful startup funding and the business idea fizzling out on the drawing board.

Step 4: Building a Prototype and Establishing Proof of Concept

So far, the steps involved mostly desk research, a bit of market research done by speaking with experts in technical and business fields, and some tinkering in the lab. For here on, taking the business idea forward demands serious commitment and hustle. One needs way more resources than what can be personally managed and therefore obtaining external funding becomes critical. While a lucky few are able to tap their personal fortunes or those of their family members for seed funding, most have to take their ideas into the financial marketplace to raise money. The lowest hanging fruit are funding sources that can be accessed directly from the university. There may be departments or special programs that offer assistance in the form of facilities, consumable resources, and connections to people with the right expertise. Some may provide cash in the form of grants, fellowships, or donor-linked awards. Beyond these there are grant programs sponsored by regional or national governments as well as by industry. Some lifescience companies have their own “incubators” which may provide physical resources and/or funding. There also are “Shark Tank” style innovation competitions at an inter-University level which could award significant sum in prize money. Unfortunately, pursuing one source of funding almost never suffices and applying through multiple avenues is highly recommended.

The emphasis on fundraising at this early stage is primarily because this is where a vast majority of business ideas hit a wall. Steps 1 to 3 can give you an attractive business plan but without a product prototype any further progress can easily stall. One exception to this general rule is purely software-based solutions which are relatively inexpensive to prototype. That being said, scaling a software prototype into a commercial solution ready to be rolled out can at times be painfully expensive. With this initial capital infusion and with sufficient grit, conviction, and problem-solving one can establish “proof-of-concept”. This simply means showing that you are able to build something that does what you claim it can do and which can be scaled to fulfil some real unmet need in the market and / or society.

Step 5: Planning Your Exit Strategy

Congratulations, you have successfully built a prototype! This is much farther than what most researchers aspiring to be entrepreneurs manage to accomplish. From here, several possibilities beckon and figuring out what to do next is as much a question for deep personal reflection as it is a testament to one’s business acumen and risk appetite. Building and leading an actual business is an all-consuming affair. While the potential upside can be tremendous and life-changing it also means that one has to practically give up all other pursuits for the foreseeable future. This is something that many researchers are averse to just by their nature.

Regardless of whether a founder-researcher chooses to become a full-time entrepreneur, bringing on external investors and people with necessary experience and expertise should be the top priority of any founder at this stage. Typically, angel investors and early-stage venture capital funds are the most frequently sought out sources of both money and business expertise. At this stage, a founder also needs to think about what structure they would like the business to have in terms of ownership share, level of control on strategic decisions, control of IP, and many more parameters. Universities have technology transfer offices that are set up to ensure that the institute benefits from any IP generated by researchers using its facilities. They could be a good source of contacts and introduction to the investor community but also are an independent party to negotiations that happen when the business is getting initially capitalised. Typically, it is good for a founder to have a startup-experienced lawyer in their corner before starting any serious negotiations with investors.

Conclusion

This article provides a general roadmap for commercialising research findings and starting a business. Every venture is unique, with countless nuances and specifics that cannot be fully covered here. For researchers with promising ideas, entrepreneurship may seem daunting, and it is not for everyone. However, if you believe your research has real-world value beyond academic publications, I hope this guide demystifies the commercialisation process and encourages you to take that first step in your entrepreneurial journey!