Pilot2Service Commercialisation Journey Roadmap
Purpose
Structure the entire commercialisation journey into five stages and build an actionable roadmap that ties stage gates to agile iteration.
Based on
the owner's published commercialisation guide (owner, 2025). Chapter "Planning Your Commercialisation Journey" (pp. 45-49).
- EIT Digital entrepreneurship programme: from opportunity recognition to concept and validation before a venture
- Finland's Research to Business (the owner's own case) funding programme: identifying commercialisation potential, proving customer relevance, mapping the route to market
Method
- Stage 1 — Opportunity recognition: what problem, for whom (see
research-opportunity-recognition). If no compelling use case is found, pivot the application or redirect the research. - Stage 2 — Concept development: articulate the value proposition, target customer, a rough business model, and record the key assumptions that must hold true.
- Stage 3 — Validation (proof of concept): test the critical assumptions technically (prototype/experiment in a relevant environment) and commercially (pilots, LOIs, focus groups). If the data doesn't encourage, refine the concept or pivot in the lean-startup spirit.
- Stage 4 — Strategy and business planning: choose the pathway (see
spinout-vs-licensing-pathway), refine go-to-market, pricing, IP strategy, regulatory pathway, and funding plan using validated data. - Stage 5 — Execution roadmap: turn the plan into concrete, time-boxed milestones (e.g. "working prototype Q2," "10 pilot customers Q4") — keep the roadmap agile and updatable, not a static document.
- Involve multi-perspective validation throughout the journey: customers, industry mentors, the TTO, investors — don't plan purely internally.
- Use existing equivalent support services (opportunity recognition workshops, market research help, business concept training) if your organisation offers them.
Gotchas
- The five stages read as sequential, but the Method explicitly builds in loops back (pivot at Stage 1, refine/pivot at Stage 3) — treating the roadmap as a one-way waterfall contradicts step 5's instruction to keep it "agile and updatable, not a static document."
- Stage 4 ("choose the pathway... using validated data") assumes Stage 3 validation is actually done — picking spinout vs. licensing before technical/commercial validation exists inverts the intended order and bases the pathway decision on assumptions instead of evidence.
- Milestones in Stage 5 only work as stage gates if they're concrete and time-boxed (e.g., "10 pilot customers Q4"); vague milestones like "get funding" or "build product" don't give the roadmap anything to check against.
- Step 6 (multi-perspective validation with customers, mentors, TTO, investors) is called out as a distinct failure mode when skipped — a roadmap validated only inside the founding team can look complete while missing blind spots those outside groups would have caught.
- This is a top-level overview: each stage links out to a deeper skill (readiness check, funding pathway, team design, etc.). Treating this skill's five-stage sketch as sufficient on its own for a stage-specific decision under-specifies that decision.
What this skill does NOT do
- Does not replace a deep dive into individual stages — each stage links to its own, more detailed skill in this pack.
- Does not schedule the stages for you without baseline data.
Continue from here
- Next in this pack:
../founding-team-design-and-agreements/SKILL.md— Build a balanced founding team and agree the rules of engagement (Founders' Agreement) before disagreements arise. - Pack's shared guardrails:
../../CLAUDE.md - Overview of the full journey:
../commercialisation-journey-roadmap/SKILL.md
References
../../references/case-studies.md— 7 spin-out examples from different industries and regions../../references/terminology.md— the handbook's glossary../../references/sources.md— the handbook's own source references../../CLAUDE.md— the pack's shared guardrails