Assessing the Technological and Commercial Readiness for Innovative Projects

We live in a world governed by innovation that imprints a rapid pace of change. Innovative start-up projects are the engine of these changes. The low success rates of these projects are well known and somehow assumed in the idea of fail, fail again, fail better. We learn from failure, but it’s best to prepare for success. Thus, the paper proposes the use of the CloverLeaf methodology in the evaluation of innovative higher education projects. The identification of the technological, marketing, commercial and management readiness for the projects within the University of Petrosani represents the main results of the present research. These findings will be helpful in directing decisions regarding the following steps to be taken regarding the efforts to be invested based on the readiness dimension that needs to be improved, the crowdfunding campaigns (reward and equity) to be launched, and/or business accelerators that can raise the project’s chances of success.