Clinical Utility:  This is a term used in medicine to describe the relevance and usefulness of an intervention in patient care.

Company Board: A board of directors is an executive committee that jointly supervise the activities of an organization, which can be either a for-profit or a nonprofit organization such as a business, nonprofit organization, or a government agency. This is another component that adds credibility to a spin-out company with seed venture capital investors.

Corporate Strategy: A corporate strategy entails a clearly defined, long-term vision that a spin-out company uses to create corporate value and motivate the workforce to implement the proper actions to achieve customer satisfaction. It describes activities across the entire value chain of the company and with its strategic partners.

Feasibility Study: This is an assessment of the practicality of a proposed commercialisation project with an industry partner. The study aims to objectively and rationally uncover the strengths and weaknesses of the technology and identify opportunities and threats, the resources required and the value generated.

Field of Use: A restriction in a patent license that limits the scope of the licensed patent rights to a defined area or application. This creates understanding on what the licensee can do and cannot do. In many cases, the Field of Use can be broad. In rare cases, different commercial partners could commercialise a technology and negotiate access to different fields.

Incubator: A startup incubator is a collaborative program for startup companies — usually physically located in one central workspace — designed to help startups in their infancy succeed by providing workspace, seed funding, mentoring and training.

Key Opinion Leader:  A key opinion leader (KOL) is a trusted, well-respected influencer with proven experience and expertise in a particular field. In healthcare, these thought leaders could be physicians, hospital executives, health system directors, researchers, patient advocacy group members, and more (Scher & Schett, 2021).

Market Segment: A market segment is a group of people who share one or more similar characteristics. Corporations and marketing teams use various criteria to develop target markets for their products and services (hayes, 2021).

Market Analysis: A market analysis studies the attractiveness and the dynamics of a special market within a special industry. It is part of the industry analysis and thus in turn of the global environmental analysis. Through all of these analyses, the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of a company can be identified (Twin, 2021).

Market Traction: This is quantitative evidence that there is  market demand for your technology to solve a well-defined problem. This evidence is typically used in future negotiations with seed venture capital investors.

Needs Analysis: A needs analysis is a structured process to obtain evidence of unmet health needs. This evidence helps to validate or critique assumptions held by the inventors. Importanly, there are many unmet needs, so a needs analysis needs to prioritise which needs are most important to companies and investors (Schwartz, 2016).

Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT):  This is an international patent law treaty, concluded in 1970. It provides a unified procedure for filing patent applications to protect inventions in each of its contracting states. A patent application filed under the PCT is called an international application, or PCT application.

”PCT” deadline: This deadline occurs 12 months after filing the priority application.

Priority Date:  The priority date is the first date of filing of a patent application. It is essential for determining whether any subsequent application for the same invention can still be assessed as novel. It also makes it possible to determine whether the subject-matter of a patent application is prior art on a particular date.

Proof-of-Concept: This is a set of activities that determine whether an invention can actually be implemented in a real commercial context. A proof of concept is meant to determine the feasibility of the idea or to verify that the idea will function as envisioned.

Reimbursement: Drug reimbursement denotes a situation where either a drug company is paid by a third party for all or part of a prescription, or where a third party repays the consumer a portion or all of the prescription's price.

Risk Profile: A risk profile identifies the level of risk within a commercialisation project. Every organisation involved in innovation needs to reduce the risk profile of its projects or close such projects. Importantly – risk is dynamic and changes over time. Therefore, a TTO needs to implement a project management process that reduces risk. There are many different types of risk, some of which are described below:

• Technology Risk – Does the technology actually solve the problem that is claimed?
• Personal Values Risk – Do the inventors have the same understanding of the problem as industry? Do they inventors have an appropriate mindset to work with a commercial partner or investor?
• Patent Risk – Do they patent claims actually describe the final product?
• Market Risk – Is the market for the technology too immature such that there are too few investors? Or is the technology regarded as a dated solution to a dated problem?

Scientific Advisory Board: This is a group of well-regarded scientists that advise on the development of a technology. Importantly, this adds credibility to a spin-out company with seed venture capital investors.

Seed Venture Capital: Seed capital — also called seed money or seed financing — is referred to as such because it is money raised by a spin-out in its early stages.

Series A: The main difference between seed capital and Series A funding is the amount of money involved and what form of ownership or participation the investor receives. Seed capital will usually be in smaller amounts (e.g., tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars), while Series A financing is typically in the millions of dollars

Stakeholder:  A stakeholder is a individual, organisation or group that may have an interest in your selected problem (and invention) and could affect or be affected by your commercialisation project.

Stakeholder Analysis: This analysis seeks to describe all the potential stakeholders of your commercialisation project.

Technology Readiness Level (TRL): Technology readiness levels are a method for estimating the maturity of technologies during the acquisition phase of a program, developed at NASA during the 1970s. The use of TRLs enables consistent, uniform discussions of technical maturity across different types of technology.

Value Chain: A value chain is the entire set of activities that an organization carries out to create value for its customers. Importantly, this includes both R&D and commercial activities.

Value Inflection Point or Milestones:  A “value inflection point” or milestone is the outcome of an activity that substantially increases the valuation of your project. Importantly, there are technical and commercial value inflection points. Examples are a proof-of-concept experiment or completing a feasibility study with an industry partner.

Value Perception: In response to your value proposition, stakeholders many describe how they perceive value. This may be quite different to your original understand of what could be valuable.

Value Proposition:  A value proposition is a promise of value to be delivered, communicated, and acknowledged. It is also a belief from the customer about how value will be delivered, experienced and acquired. For your project at AU, it is likely that your value proposition will change as you encounter stakeholders.