Fusion › Curriculum › RGME 468
Technology Ventures and IP Strategies
The second half of the full-year Fusion sequence. Fall answers whether a technology is worth pursuing. Spring designs the company that would pursue it: product requirements, regulatory and reimbursement path, capital structure, and a pitch delivered to a live panel.
- Term
- Spring 2027
Jan 11 – Apr 26 - Credits
- 3
- Meets
- Mon & Wed, 4:40–5:55 pm
Law section 4:50–6:05 pm - Lead instructors
- Theodore Theofrastous, J.D.
Joseph Jankowski, Ph.D.
Cross-listed as
RGME 468 · EBME 468 · GENE 468 · LAWS 5342 · MGMT 468
Listed in the registrar's schedule as Commercialization & IP Mgmt II.
Premise
From assessment to company
Each semester is designed to stand alone, but the sequence is built to be taken whole.
In the fall, teams work to understand, analyze, and communicate the general commercial opportunity presented by a new and complex invention arising from research. In the spring, they use that work to design a fundable company, building the skills of strategy, planning, and venture fundamentals around a technology they already understand in depth.
Nothing restarts. The same team keeps the same technology, and the analysis defended in December becomes the input built on in January. Assumptions that survived the fall panel are tested again against a capital structure and a cap table.
Structure
Six modules
Each module is a block of classes with a working session attached. Teams move a single technology through all six.
Product Design
Matching solutions to need, then converting that match into requirements. Teams take the needs statement developed in the fall, derive what the finished product must do, and map their intellectual property onto those features, so that the IP analysis is done in the context of a specific product.
Development Scoping
Product and solution comparables, proof of concept and prototyping, and sources of funding. What would it take to demonstrate this works, who has done something adjacent, and what capital is available at this stage and on what terms.
Path to Market
Two sessions on regulatory strategy, followed by pricing and reimbursement. In biomedical commercialization the reimbursement mechanism frequently determines whether an approved product reaches patients.
Planning
Strategy and value proposition, cashflow and resource planning, and business planning. The fall's financial model is rebuilt as an operating plan, with resources attached to decisions and time attached to both.
Startup Companies
Venture investment fundamentals and terms; cap tables and applied valuation; venture terms and deal structures; and an investment simulation with working negotiation sessions. Teams apply the opportunity model against operational forecasting, then negotiate a structure and report out.
Final Presentations
Fundamentals of pitching, team practice presentations, and a final pitch before a panel. The panel presses the assumptions, and the plan has to hold up.
Outcomes
Intellectual property strategy is business strategy. IP is a strategic asset that can create value in the marketplace, and the structure of a portfolio and the way it is used depend on a business model that includes market identification, value assessment, and an understanding of the competitive landscape.
With those legal and business inputs in hand, a student can appreciate why getting a biomedical product to market may require a complex licensing strategy, venture capital or other financing, or the formation of a company. On completing the sequence, students should be able to recognize intellectual property at the moment of creation, value it from a commercial perspective, identify the inputs required to move a technology toward clinical implementation, determine a development plan and IP strategy suited to accelerating validation and investment, and articulate the difference between research and development as capital markets understand it.
Assessment
| Weight | Component | Basis |
|---|---|---|
| 25% | Final venture pitch and plan | Team |
| 25% | Take-home exam / exercise | Individual |
| 10% | Product requirements, financial model, strategic overview | Team |
| 10% | Venture negotiation simulation and presentation | Team |
| 10% | Data source integration | Team |
| 10% | Class and team-evaluated participation | Individual |