Many people envision themselves changing the world and making it a better place. Through leadership, contributions, volunteerism, taking new approaches, and sheer determination to make things better. I’m one of those people too. When I try to make the world a better place, my influence may not span the entire globe, but I improve life for those around me and address their needs.
There are others out there who operate on a completely different level of impact. Their work is poised to redefine the future of the world. A few examples that come to mind are the rapid development of COVID-19 vaccines, pioneering energy solutions to address climate change, producing cancer-detecting smart needles, and creating autonomous vehicle guidance systems.
These are deep tech innovators; people who are using scientific discovery, leading the next wave of technologies and advanced engineering to create solutions to the world’s biggest problems. Deep tech innovators are not satisfied with small, incremental solutions. These individuals use years of research, experimentation, testing and pilot programs to completely reimagine solutions through scientific and technological discovery.
They are pioneers who are boldly going “where no one has gone before” and are leading the way to a new frontier of innovation.
Yet taking innovation from lab to market can be challenging. Startup companies across the board have a 90 percent failure rate according to several studies. Deep tech startups are among them and face some unique challenges. And while these innovators are developing critical solutions to the world’s problems, commercializing their science-based technologies is not necessarily part of their skillset. Maintaining a keen focus on the “big idea” and ensuring its operational success is time-consuming. With tight budgets and limited staffing, innovators need to tap into an ecosystem of support and leverage the expertise of specialized talent who can tell compelling stories and develop go-to-market strategies that meet the needs of key audiences.
Boldsquare has coached and trained deep tech leaders through commercialization and marketing strategies. As a result, these companies saw:
- Improved customer focus
- Compelling messaging and value propositions
- Differentiated brand positioning
- Increased potential to raise additional investment
- Accelerated time from development to market
- Successful overcoming of barriers to success.
If you’re a deep tech innovator in startup mode, I encourage you to envision your breakthrough solution out there changing the world. Feels good, right? To make that vision a reality you need to focus on how to win the hearts and minds of the audiences you foresee investing, regulating, supplying, purchasing and using your solution. When you have this customer focus, marketing and relationship management, your world-changing efforts can be applied at scale.