Pilot2Service Research Opportunity Recognition
Purpose
Assess whether a research result has real commercial potential before building a commercialisation strategy — distinguishing genuine market pull from technology push.
Based on
the owner's published commercialisation guide (owner, 2025). Chapter "Spotting Real Opportunities" (pp. 18-20).
- Kirzner (1973/1979) — entrepreneurial alertness (see also the opportunity-recognition core pack)
- VC investor evaluation criteria: market signal often outweighs the science alone
Method
- State the problem in a single sentence: what problem does the invention solve, and for whom?
- Map the current alternatives / status quo — why do they fall short?
- Do a value proposition mapping and competitor analysis: what is the genuine edge (price, performance, new capability)?
- Test early: customer interviews, surveys, a landing page, proof-of-market funding.
- Assess TRL and freedom to operate side by side — is the idea at a point where a prototype is possible without unreasonable cost or regulatory barriers?
- Assess timing and the competitive landscape — look for the "sweet spot": not too early, not into a crowded market without differentiation.
- Treat the whole assessment as a testable hypothesis: strong signals (enthusiastic industry partners, positive user feedback, clear market gaps) → move forward aggressively; weak signals → redirect or preserve resources.
Gotchas
- Step 5 deliberately pairs TRL with freedom-to-operate — a high-TRL
prototype blocked by someone else's patent is not "ready," and this
skill doesn't perform that legal FTO analysis itself (see
ip-disclosure-and-ownership-checkand TTO/IP counsel); treating step 5 as satisfied because TRL alone is high skips half the check. - Step 7's "strong signals → move forward aggressively" is easy to
over-read from a thin sample — one enthusiastic industry contact (see
industry-partner-engagement) is not the interview/survey/landing-page evidence step 4 asks for, and shouldn't single-handedly upgrade the signal strength. - Step 1 asks for the problem in one sentence, but researchers tend to describe the technology's capability instead of the pain point — if the sentence names a technique rather than a problem for a named "who," that is the technology-push pattern this skill exists to catch.
- This skill explicitly does not make the go/no-go call — a "weak signal"
result should route to redirecting or preserving resources per step 7,
not get silently escalated into
spinout-vs-licensing-pathwaywithout first re-testing. - Step 6's "sweet spot" timing judgment is a point-in-time hypothesis (step 7), not a one-time verdict — an opportunity assessed as well-timed months ago shouldn't be treated as still valid without re-scanning the competitive landscape.
What this skill does NOT do
- Does not make the final go/no-go decision for you.
- Does not assess patentability in a legal sense — see
ip-disclosure-and-ownership-checkand your own TTO/IP counsel. - Does not replace real customer conversations — it structures what to ask and how to interpret the answers.
Continue from here
- Next in this pack:
../spinout-vs-licensing-pathway/SKILL.md— Choose the right commercialisation pathway for a research result: spin-out (equity-based), licensing (royalty-based), or hybrid. - Related skill in another pack:
../../../../opportunity-recognition/skills/opportunity-evaluation-and-judgment/SKILL.md - Related skill in another pack (the owner's productised follow-on assessment
of market attractiveness and feasibility):
../../../../opportunity-recognition/skills/opportunity-value-assessment/SKILL.md - 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