Turning an idea in to a new product or service, breaking into a new market, or implementing cutting edge sensing or IoT technologies in your workspace can be complex and challenging.
CENSIS can help you understand and overcome the key, critical stages in the process, and give you the results and confidence you need to take your idea to the next level.
We’ve partnered with companies of all sizes – from large multinationals and the public sector through to Scotland’s dominant SME community, including several high-tech start-ups.
Since our formation in 2014, we’ve delivered over 180 projects with companies in Scotland, forging innovation collaborations from a blend of industry know-how, university research and our own in-house experts.
At CENSIS you’ll hear us refer to Technology Readiness Levels (TRL). If you’re unfamiliar with the concept, the TRL scale describes a technology’s maturity, beginning at TRL1 (basic research) and ending at TRL9 (a field-proven, commercial product).
Broadly speaking, university research and invention happens at TRL 1-3, with TRL 6-9 reserved for proven technology that is edging closer to a full commercial application. The space in between, TRL 4-6 is often known as the ‘valley of death’ – where concept is turned into prototypes and pilots.
This involves not just testing that something will work every time (not just once) and has scalability, but also figuring out the business case for it to work in the real world.
This zone is high risk for businesses as the technology could fail or take longer to mature than originally anticipated, risking ongoing investment and/or customer commitments and confidence.
TRL 4-6 is where CENSIS provides impact; taking your idea from one that works on paper, and into a real-world working example, or ‘Minimum Viable Product’ (MVP). Our collaborative projects typically started at TRL 2-3 and close at TRL 5-7. We consider all likely technical and commercial risks in our planning stages and take car to identify mitigation routes that could still deliver MVPs where possible.
The CENSIS team can help you determine where your product, service or technology currently is and where it could go.
If you would like to find out more about our work with businesses of all sizes, public sector bodies and universities, we have highlighted some of the challenges we have faced together with our clients.
