Entrepreneurship: Getting Your Research Off the Bench and Out Into the Real World

Taking an idea off the bench and into the market, often called technology transfer, encompasses a variety of activities by which inventions flow from basic research to commercial entities and then to public use. This article describes two useful tools to help improve the translation of ideas to market. The first is the Business Model Canvas, or Lean Canvas for Business (LCB), an existing tool that helps entrepreneurs identify a minimum viable product (MVP) and channels and methods to take it to market. The second is a new tool (in the early pilot test stages), the Lean Canvas for Invention (LCI), that can help academic researchers identify the most valuable research questions (MVRqs) that may yield inventions that could later move through a Business Model Canvas to become a viable product.