Enlighten Award Details
The objective of the Michigan Enlighten Program is to help Coulter teams with new product strategic planning and prepare for Evolve activities to execute on strategic plans. The culmination of Enlighten is a strategic plan and pitch for the Evolve selection meeting.
Through Enlighten activities, we will answer three fundamental questions:
- Does the envisioned product address a true unmet clinical need that health care providers and payors are willing to solve?
- Is there a viable business opportunity?
- Will the proposed early stage product development approach de-risk and advance the project towards generating investor or industry interest in the product concept? These are the same questions that the Coulter Oversight Committee will have in mind when evaluating project pitches for Evolve funding and support at the Coulter Project Selection meeting.
Enlighten is designed to provide specialized business frameworks and essential tools for successful translation of biomedical technologies from lab to market
Teams are guided through a series of interactive exercises, pressure-testing the commercial viability of ideas using universal business criteria as well as the unique requirements of biomedical product commercialization.
Coulter will provide up to $20k in funding as part of Enlighten to cover:
- Professionally moderated market research interviews with key stakeholders to examine current practices and elicit feedback on envisioned product concept
- Intellectual property (patent) landscape assessment
- Competitive landscape assessment
- Preliminary regulatory assessment to gauge most likely FDA pathway based on envisioned product concept
Teams will also work with the Coulter team and assigned industry mentors with relevant experience to guide teams in target product profile and milestone refinement. Through this process, teams will gain a greater understanding of the commercial potential and unique value proposition for envisioned products and relevant milestones that Coulter can fund to de-risk and generate investor interest.