Beyond TRL: Why NASA's Safety Framework Falls Short for Venture Building

The Technology Readiness Level (TRL) framework has become ubiquitous in innovation circles, guiding funding decisions from government agencies to venture capital firms. Initially designed by NASA to answer one critical question - "is this technology safe enough to fly?" - TRL has been stretched far beyond its intended purpose, creating blind spots that can derail commercialisation efforts.

The Origins and Purpose of TRL

When NASA researcher Stan Sadin conceived the first TRL scale in 1974, space programs were becoming increasingly complex, requiring a systematic way to evaluate technology maturity for spacecraft design and risk assessment. The original seven-level framework, formally defined in 1989 and later expanded to nine levels in the 1990s, served a specific need: “ensuring technological reliability for mission-critical aerospace applications”.

The TRL framework was designed to provide "mutual agreement between research personnel, research management, and mission flight program managers" about technology maturity. It offered a linear progression from basic principles (TRL 1) to systems proven in operational environments (TRL 9), with each level representing a decrease in technical risk and an increase in confidence in the technology's performance.

This approach worked perfectly for NASA's context. The space agency had a captive market – itself - with unlimited budgets for critical missions where technical failure meant catastrophic loss. Cost considerations, while important, were secondary to ensuring technologies wouldn't fail in the harsh environment of space.

The Commercialisation Gap: What TRL Misses

However, the leap from NASA's controlled environment to the messy reality of commercialisation reveals fundamental limitations. TRL focuses exclusively on technical maturity while ignoring the broader ecosystem challenges that determine commercial success. Hands-on experience with commercialising over 200 products, services, and companies highlighted three critical gaps that TRL fails to address:

System Integration Challenges

Real-world deployment requires technologies to integrate into existing, often legacy systems. A technically mature innovation at TRL 9 may still face significant challenges when it must integrate with established infrastructures, data formats, or operational processes. This is the first barrier - moving from concept to early commercial prototype deployment with the very first customers.

Regulatory and Approval Bottlenecks

Unlike NASA's internal assessments, commercial technologies (also products or services) often must navigate complex regulatory landscapes. Medical devices require FDA approval, financial technologies must comply with banking regulations, steel products must adhere to stringent sector-specific quality standards, and autonomous vehicles must meet evolving safety standards. Technical readiness says nothing about regulatory readiness—a distinction that can add years to commercialisation timelines and require fundamental design changes.

Market Acceptance and Trust Building

Perhaps most critically, TRL assumes that technical capability is equivalent to market desirability. The framework cannot assess whether customers, partners, and supply chains are ready to adopt the technology, product or service. While commercialising steel products and services, market and supply chain readiness were the most prominent challenges we needed to overcome. Market trust encompasses factors such as brand reputation, switching costs, network effects, and ecosystem alignment - none of which are fully captured by technical validation alone.

Bridging the Valley of Death

The limitations of TRL-focused thinking also contribute to the notorious "Valley of Death"- the gap between TRL 6 (technology demonstrated in a relevant environment) and TRL 7 (system prototype demonstration in an operational environment). This transition doesn’t just require technical validation but also market validation, business model development, and ecosystem alignment. Our research consistently shows that technologies fail in this valley not because of technical shortcomings but because of insufficient attention to the other commercialisation factors. Our findings suggest that successful navigation requires parallel development of technical and commercial prowess.

Supplementing TRL to drive successful innovation growth (i.e. venture, product, and service growth)

Rather than abandoning TRL entirely, we propose that successful innovation growth requires supplementing it with additional checks and balances:

• Commercial Readiness

• Ecosystem Readiness

• Risk Integration

• Stakeholder Alignment

Recommendations for Innovation Leaders

For venture builders (and product or service developers), investors, and innovation managers, the key is recognising that technical readiness is necessary but not sufficient for commercialisation success. Effective systems should:

1. Start with market needs rather than technical capabilities, ensuring innovation addresses genuine market demand,

2. Develop business models in parallel with technology, testing commercial assumptions alongside technical hypotheses,

3. Engage ecosystems early, building relationships with customers, partners, and regulators throughout development,

4. Measure commercial progress with the same rigour applied to technical milestones, and

5. Plan for transitions between development phases, recognising that each gap requires different resources and strategies.

Conclusion

TRL has served the innovation community well by providing a common language for discussing technical maturity. However, its origins in NASA's unique context make it an incomplete guide for venture building (or innovation in general, for that matter). The stones may look solid, but the mountain of commercialisation is full of hidden cliffs that TRL never shows.

The most successful innovation efforts recognise this limitation and supplement technical assessments with equally rigorous evaluation of market readiness, ecosystem alignment, and commercial viability. By understanding the three gaps of commercialisation and developing appropriate metrics for each, venture builders (or innovators) can navigate the treacherous journey from laboratory breakthrough to market impact.

The future of innovation lies not in choosing between technical and commercial perspectives, but in integrating them from the very beginning. After all, the goal isn't just to fly - it's to soar in the marketplace.

Growth Lantern can help your venture, product, or service navigate the commercialisation journey effectively with our commercialisation framework, considering the critical technical, commercial and regulatory perspectives. We have applied it successfully to various innovations.

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Sources

1.     Sadin, S. R., Povinelli, F. P., & Rosen, R. (1989). The NASA technology push towards future space mission systems. Acta Astronautica, 20, 73-77.

2.     NASA. (2023). Technology Readiness Levels Demystified. NASA Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate.

3.     Mankins, J. C. (1995). Technology readiness levels. NASA, Office of Space Access and Technology.

Gbadegeshin, S. A. (2022). Overcoming the Valley of Death: A New Model for High-Tech Startups. Technology Innovation Management Review.