Economies, organizations (small, medium and large) and individuals must discover and
commercialize new products in order to compete and prosper in the 21st century global
economy. The importance of introducing new products to the market can be seen in the
fact that it builds a sustainable competitive advantage for economies, organizations and
individuals. Furthermore, these new products do not only lead to profits for individuals
and organizations, but it also improves the quality of life of all individuals and generate
further economic opportunities.
Through the commercialization of innovation, the gap between the needs of the market
and the inventions which innovators have can be bridged. However, it remains a key
challenge to all innovators to take an invention from the idea phase to the market in
order to produce economic returns. Ideas or inventions cannot generate economic
returns for the innovator. It is only once the invention is successfully absorbed into the
marketplace that the inventor can benefit from its profit, and therefore the importance of
commercializing inventions is highlighted.
Globally the failure rates of new products are especially high, preventing innovators
from gaining financial benefits. New product failure rates are estimated at between 50-
80% and even major companies with sufficient resources struggle with the
commercialization of inventions.
The high failure rates of inventions can be attributed to a wide variety of factors,
including limited access to resources, failure of innovators to sufficiently protect their
inventions or weak marketing efforts, among others. One such reason for failure,
however, is the fact that innovators are unsure about the steps to follow in
commercializing an invention. Innovators either take false steps and waste valuable
time, or they leave out critical steps in the process.
It is important for innovators to know what the steps in the commercialization process
are and to follow them, in order to ensure that they follow a logical process; plan for all
the important aspects regarding commercialization and are aware of what will be
required of them at the different stages in the process.
South Africa is not doing well in bringing new research discoveries to the market and
there may be many reasons for this problem. In order to introduce new inventions to the
market successfully through commercialization, it is important to know what the
problems/barriers are that innovators experience during the commercialization process.
It is also important to identify the need for a common framework understood by
government, higher education, research councils, technology organizations and venture
capital to help identify roles and functional relationships in the system of innovation. This study aimed to acquire information regarding the problems and/or barriers
confronting entrepreneurs in the commercialization process, by determining how
successful individuals and SMMEs were in commercializing their innovation. The client
base of the Centrum for Rapid Prototyping and Manufacturing (CRPM) and the
Technology Station (PDTS) for 2005 to 2010 were used in this study. The secondary
objectives were to investigate the steps the entrepreneur followed in the
commercialization process; to identify the factors, both positively and negatively, that
influence the commercialization of innovation; to determine the problems/mistakes that
entrepreneurs made in the commercialization process; and to determine the success
factors for entrepreneurs in the commercialization process.
The results showed that the minority of the respondents (20%) managed to
commercialize their inventions successfully. The remaining 80% of the respondents
were either still busy moving through the commercialization process or had become
stagnant.
Furthermore, the results indicated that the typical innovator does not follow the
chronological order of the steps in the commercial process, as indicated in the literature.
Many of the steps in the commercialization process were not completed as thoroughly
as needed and some of the steps were omitted completely.
The reasons most often cited by the respondents for their lack of progress and/or
stagnation in the commercialization process are a lack of funds and a lack of support. In
other words, the respondents did not have sufficient capital to commercialize the
invention on their own and either did not know where to go to obtain the financial aid
needed or were not successful in their application for funding. The lack of support the
respondents referred to include support in terms of knowledge regarding the
commercialization process, i.e. what each step in the commercialization process entails
as well as what should be done next in the commercialization process. These two
reasons were the most often cited barriers to the successful commercialization of the
respondents.
Several recommendations are made at the end of this study that could bridge the
abovementioned barriers. The focus falls mainly on the Government, and various
recommendations regarding government support institutions are made that could better
aid innovators through the commercialization process.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:ufs/oai:etd.uovs.ac.za:etd-10172011-102727 |
| Date | 17 October 2011 |
| Creators | Booysen, Karen |
| Contributors | Dr JH van Zyl |
| Publisher | University of the Free State |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | en-uk |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.uovs.ac.za//theses/available/etd-10172011-102727/restricted/ |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to University Free State or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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