Bridging the valley of death: a success story on Danish funding schemes paving a path from technology readiness Level 1 to 9

TY - GEN

T1 - Bridging the valley of death

T2 - 2nd International Workshop on Software Engineering Research and Industrial Practice

AU - Debois, Søren

AU - Hildebrandt, Thomas

AU - Slaats, Tijs

AU - Marquard, Morten

N1 - Conference code: 2

PY - 2015/8/19

Y1 - 2015/8/19

N2 - We report on a success-story in academic-industrial collaboration: The development of a new process technology, all the way from its conception as a potentially interesting idea at the IT University of Copenhagen, to its eventual implementation in a commercial product available from Exformatics A/S proven in operational environment. The process began with academic ideas about formal process models for design and execution of trustworthy, adaptive processes and workflows. Thanks to a strategic research project, the ideas were realised into theoretical foundations and a proof-of-concept prototype implementation validated in the lab. However, we then faced the well-known challenge of moving from the lab to the real world, i.e., Moving from TRL 5 to 7 in H2020 parlance, also known as bridging the "Valley of Death". We identify the key circumstances that made it possible to overcome the challenge: The deployment of academic/industrial knowledge-networks, specific types of smaller funding implements and the "industrial PhD" model.

AB - We report on a success-story in academic-industrial collaboration: The development of a new process technology, all the way from its conception as a potentially interesting idea at the IT University of Copenhagen, to its eventual implementation in a commercial product available from Exformatics A/S proven in operational environment. The process began with academic ideas about formal process models for design and execution of trustworthy, adaptive processes and workflows. Thanks to a strategic research project, the ideas were realised into theoretical foundations and a proof-of-concept prototype implementation validated in the lab. However, we then faced the well-known challenge of moving from the lab to the real world, i.e., Moving from TRL 5 to 7 in H2020 parlance, also known as bridging the "Valley of Death". We identify the key circumstances that made it possible to overcome the challenge: The deployment of academic/industrial knowledge-networks, specific types of smaller funding implements and the "industrial PhD" model.

U2 - 10.1109/SERIP.2015.18

DO - 10.1109/SERIP.2015.18

M3 - Article in proceedings

AN - SCOPUS:84962310082

SP - 54

EP - 57

BT - Proceedings of the Second International Workshop on Software Engineering Research and Industrial Practice

PB - IEEE

Y2 - 17 May 2015

ER -