Valuing Ideas

In the 1990s, an investor once said that "any good idea was worth a million", encouraged, no doubt, by the high profile commercial successes from the early biotechnology boom. In response, researchers and their institutions fell over each other to promote their ideas to these industrial backers.

But the resulting glut of ideas has made it difficult to sort the wheat from the chaff, discouraging investors and damaging asset values for early stage opportunities. The key, it seems, is better ways to prioritise ideas for presentation to potential investors, not least by encouraging a 'product backwards' mentality (where the aim is to find a technical solution to a known problem) rather than a 'technology forwards' approach, where a concept is developed because it is exciting rather than because its market potential has been properly assessed.

In his recent blod article, published on the ATPblog, David Grainger discusses these issues and proposes some solutions.

Download the blog article here