commercialization Archives

Equimeter Wins 2023 Y-Prize

A small group of people, dressed in formal attire, posing with certificates labeled "Y-Prize Winners." They appear happy and celebratory, standing in front of an orange backdrop.

Team Equimeter (Advait Thaploo, Ujjayi Pamidigantam, Parthiv Patel) with Mack Executive Director Valery Yakubovich Congratulations to Equimeter, winners of this year's $10,000 Y-Prize! The team of undergrads proposed a commercial application for Penn's physics-informed neural network that improves pulse oximetry in patients with darker skin. A pulse oximeter is a…Read More

Ossum Technologies Wins 2022 Y-Prize

A group of five people in business attire posing in front of a green wall. Two are seated, and three are standing behind them.

Congratulations to Ossum Technologies, winners of this year’s $10,000 Y-Prize competition! The team of undergrads proposed a commercial application for Penn’s steerable needle technology that would improve the safety of cerclage wire use in orthopedic fracture fixation.…Read More

Understanding the Relationship between Divestitures and Innovation

Few studies have examined the impact of divestitures on the innovation performance of firms. In particular, little attention has been paid into how the divestiture of firms’ non-core businesses could influence the innovation outcomes of their core businesses. …Read More

Revisiting the Entrepreneurial Commercialization of Academic Science: Evidence From “Twin” Discoveries

We construct a sample of approximately 20,000 “twin” scientific articles, which allows us to hold constant differences in the nature of the advance and more precisely examine characteristics that predict startup commercialization.…Read More

Bright Idea: An Eco-Friendly, Affordable Lighting Solution Wins the 2020 Y-Prize

Four student teams wowed the judges at the 2020 Y-Prize Competition and took home prize money to invest in their ideas about how to repair and harvest energy from metal.…Read More

Penn Wharton Commercialization Workshop Guides Invention to Entrepreneurship

Clinicians and scientists explored the process of evaluating and creating business opportunities.…Read More

Breakthrough Recognition: Bias Against Novelty and Competition for Attention

Adding to the literature on the recognition and spread of ideas, and alongside the bias against novelty view documented in prior research, we introduce the perspective that articles compete for the attention of researchers who might build upon them. …Read More

‘A Clear Road Map to Commercialize an Idea’ at Penn

The Penn Wharton Commercialization Workshop offers researchers a three-day innovation primer to help them turn their ideas into successful ventures.…Read More

Challenges in the Gene Therapy Commercial Ecosystem

The emergence of biotech has resulted in a rich ecosystem of different types of actors contributing to the technological advance. Despite the enormous promise of biotech-based therapeutics, there is substantial uncertainty regarding when scientific discoveries will emerge, whether these discoveries will achieve clinical success, and how commercialized treatments will create value. …Read More

Commercializing University Technology

University-based research is an important generator of fundamental scientific knowledge in society, and may also be the basis for valuable commercial activity. We aim to update and extend our knowledge of the processes of translating academic discoveries and inventions by studying the administrative data from Penn Center for Innovation (PCI). …Read More

From Invention to Innovation: A Multi-Study Investigation of Firm Strategy and Outcomes in Clinical Trials

The translation of invention to innovation is a topic that has received significant research attention in recent times. Scholars have recognized that our understanding of the factors that shape whether and when innovative technologies arise and transform industries cannot be complete without comprehending how scientific or technological discovery evolves into commercial adoption. …Read More

Penn Wharton Commercialization Workshop 2017 Aims to Make Penn More Innovative

The second annual Penn Wharton Commercialization Workshop brought together researchers from across the university to learn about launching a new venture based on their work.…Read More

A Typology of R&D Processes Based on Market Excludability and Information Appropriability

We explore the relationship between competition among downstream commercializing firms (e.g. incumbent pharmaceutical firms) and upstream innovative firms (e.g. startup biotechnology firms). We find that in an alliance regime, common in high technology industries, competition among the commercializing firms can reduce the productivity of the innovators, resulting in a net loss of societal welfare (e.g. less drugs invented and brought to market). …Read More

Organizing for New Technologies

Getting an innovative technology to market can be a challenge for an established company when the technology runs counter to the company’s current business model. But the right organizational design can help.…Read More

A New Program to Propel Innovation at Penn

A group of people engaged in discussion in a conference room setting, sitting around a table with focus on attentive conversation.

The Penn Wharton Commercialization Workshop brought together 33 researchers from across the university to learn how to bring their ideas to market.…Read More

How to Zig and Zag for Start-up Success

The road to successful commercialization is a steep and difficult one — a fact which entrepreneurs know all too well. But like hikers who use a zig-zag trail to ease their ascent up a mountain, entrepreneurs may be able to more effectively reach their goals by taking an indirect route.…Read More

Strategic switchbacks: Dynamic commercialization strategies for technology entrepreneurs

We present a synthetic framework in which a technology entrepreneur employs a dynamic
commercialization strategy to overcome obstacles to the adoption of their ideal strategy. Whereas prior work portrays the choice of whether to license a new technology or to self-commercialize as a single, static decision, we suggest that when entrepreneurs encounter obstacles to their ideal strategy they can nevertheless achieve it by temporarily adopting a non-ideal strategy.…Read More