The Development Process
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Your Partner on the Journey
Wake Forest Innovations is your resource for developing your idea for a medical or life sciences technology into a market-changing innovation. We will be your partner during the entire innovation journey—from a rough idea sketched out on a napkin to a developed technology licensed to industry and ready for the market.
The Path to Innovation
Developing an idea into an invention and getting it into the marketplace has its ups and downs, obstacles and solutions, successes and failures. We call this journey the Path to Innovation.
How does Wake Forest Innovations help you move along this path? We break the journey into five steps and give you the support and expertise you need to move from one stage to the next.
There are five steps in the Path to Innovation—Ideate, Evaluate, Protect, Develop and License. Each of these steps has its own unique challenges and goals. By providing you with a support team experienced in both business development and scientific research, we can help blaze the trail and supply the tools necessary to accomplish the journey.
Ideate
Identify the Problem and Your Solution
During the ideate step, your innovation team from will help you work through your idea’s problem and solution. What is the unmet medical need that it addresses and how is your solution better than what is currently available?
During the ideate step, your innovation team from will help you work through your idea’s problem and solution. What is the unmet medical need that it addresses and how is your solution better than what is currently available?
Evaluate
Assess the Value of Your Idea
The ideate step is followed by a stringent evaluation process, which will help you assess the market potential of your idea. What companies might be interested in such a technology, what does the market landscape look like and what will it take to develop your idea to the point where a company will license it?
The ideate step is followed by a stringent evaluation process, which will help you assess the market potential of your idea. What companies might be interested in such a technology, what does the market landscape look like and what will it take to develop your idea to the point where a company will license it?
Protect
Create a Strategy to Protect & Develop Your Idea
During the protect step, your team will help you create a strategy to protect your intellectual property surrounding the invention, as well as a plan for how to best develop your technology. These strategies are customized to suit your technology, creating your own unique path to licensing.
During the protect step, your team will help you create a strategy to protect your intellectual property surrounding the invention, as well as a plan for how to best develop your technology. These strategies are customized to suit your technology, creating your own unique path to licensing.
Develop
Turn Your Idea into a Valuable Technology
As your idea begins to take shape, your innovation team will help you find the resources and expertise you need to develop your idea into a technology that piques the interest of potential industry partners.
As your idea begins to take shape, your innovation team will help you find the resources and expertise you need to develop your idea into a technology that piques the interest of potential industry partners.
License
Commercialize Your Technology
During the last part of this journey, we will help you license your now-developed technology, finding the industry partner who will be the best fit. That partnership with a pharmaceutical, medical device or diagnostics company, etc. will take your technology the rest of the way to market, where it can have the impact on health care that you’ve been envisioning.
During the last part of this journey, we will help you license your now-developed technology, finding the industry partner who will be the best fit. That partnership with a pharmaceutical, medical device or diagnostics company, etc. will take your technology the rest of the way to market, where it can have the impact on health care that you’ve been envisioning.
Interested in Becoming an Inventor?
If you are faculty or staff of Wake Forest Baptist or Wake Forest University and have an idea for a novel medical technology, we want to hear it. In the form below, write us a quick message describing your invention, and we will contact you to start a conversation about getting started on the Path to Innovation.
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