Commercializing Technology: NASA’s Incubator Program

By Julie A. Holland
Director, NASA Commercialization Center
California State Polytechnic University, Pomona

Commercializing technology is a daunting task. Of every 11 new product ideas, only one will successfully make it to the marketplace.ully 46 percent of new product investment becomes sunk costs. Yet, a few good companies consistently attain an 80 percent technology commercialization success rate and have led the way in establishing best practices.

The NASA Incubator program consists of nine incubators, each residing near a NASA research center. The purpose of the incubators is to use the best practices of technology commercialization to help early stage businesses successfully launch new products that incorporate NASA technology.

The incubators are a novel new program that extends the commitment NASA has made to commercializing its technology from licensing and sponsored research to a full complement of physical resources and technical assistance. Most importantly, the nature of the technical assistance is matched to the complexities of navigating a successful new product design and launch.

The promise has always been there. NASA invests millions of dollars annually in basic and applied research in order to meet the objectives of its missions. The result is a rich source of technology either developed internally and available through licensing, or developed externally by a company through some form of NASA-sponsored research. This investment creates a significant source of emerging technology that can typically be demonstrated in at least one space-related application.

This is a very real opportunity for the small technology business. The high-risk period, including the discovery and early applied phases of an emerging technology’s development, has been funded by NASA. Intellectual property rights can be secured. As significant as this contribution is, the complex process of commercializing is only beginning. It is at this interface that NASA’s network of nine business incubators assumes responsibility.

The type of company that benefits most is the early stage technology company that wishes to license technology developed at one of the NASA Centers or already owns the intellectual property rights through a NASA-sponsored research agreement. Regardless of the genesis, the company intends to develop the technology and has the technical capacity to convert the research and early development phase to a fully applied environment. Typically, minimal effort has been put into confirming a viable market and establishing the business case.

The first overarching objective is to instill the best practice culture of market pull as opposed to technology push. It means moving from a mentality of "the technology works" to the reality of "who will benefit from using the technology."

The NASA Alliance for Small Business Opportunity (NASBO) launched late in 2000. The 12-month pilot is testing a commercialization support program in preparation for a national roll-out using NASA’s network of incubators. This is yet another example of innovative initiatives available through NASA.

Whether a company is developing its own technology or seeking to license technology, the process is rigorous and requires both strategic and tactical expertise.

NASA’s network of incubators provides a very real opportunity to convert technology commercialization risk into a reward by ensuring that there is continuity in the process and an extended application-oriented infrastructure.