Prepare the commercialization of your research results and their development into new business

Apply for Research to Business funding when:

Your team believes that your idea has commercial potential

• A researcher or a research group sees an opportunity to commercialize a research-driven product or service idea, or they see how their idea could be commercialized.
• The researcher or research group has appointed a skilled project team to lead the idea towards commercial utilization.

Your project is supported by your research organization

• A research organization's innovation services unit (or similar) has evaluated your idea as having a high novelty value and commercial potential, and it supports the project's funding. If your organization does not have a unit that provides innovation services, contact the director of research and/or Business Finland's contact person.

The targeted business has potential to succeed

• The new business targeted by the project has been assessed to be significant.
• The project aims to create opportunities for new business.

Commercialization rights have been identified

• The research organization has sufficient rights to use the background material and the research results to commercialize knowledge and competence.
• The research organization seeks and has the ability to transfer the rights to the research results to the party that will commercialize the idea after the project.

You want to examine alternative commercialization options

• The project examines several alternative commercialization options. The company that will commercialize the research-driven product or service idea has not been identified at the beginning of or during the project.
• The actual product and business development phases will take place after the project in a new company to be established or as a new business activity within an existing company.

The funding is intended for preparing the commercialization of a research-driven product or service idea and for conducting applied research that supports commercialization.

Commercialization can be prepared throughout the project, and it must account for at least 40% of total approved project costs.

The preparation of commercialization includes

• feasibility studies and other studies related to intellectual property rights and the freedom to operate
• the examination of the research idea from the commercialization perspective (proof of relevance)
• the determination of the customer value, market surveys, customer studies
• the identification of competing solutions
• the experimental verification of the idea's viability (proof of concept)
• the identification of funding models and potential financiers
• the identification of business models
• the protection of intellectual property rights to the idea (excluding maintenance costs. Trademark costs are not eligible)
• communication related to the identification of potential customers and financiers
• commercialization and entrepreneurship skills coaching aimed to advance the project

Funding cannot be used for the following

• preparing a business plan for a company
• acquiring marketing material or creating a brand
• product development
• activities that are not directly linked to the preparation of commercialization
• commissioned research
• basic research

If your project does not proceed in accordance with its approved plan and the goals set for it, we will not continue to provide funding for your project.

Contact your research organization's innovation or commercialization unit

They help you evaluate the suitability of Research to Business funding for your project and can support you in the application process. If you are planning to carry out your project jointly with another research organization, make sure that all parties are committed to the project and agree on who is doing the work to be done.

Prepare to present your project

The application process includes a brief presentation of the project to Business Finland's specialists before submitting an application.

Take a look at previous projects

Examples of projects carried out using Business to Finland funding are available on the websites of organizations for which funding has been granted:

• Aalto University
• Helsinki University
• Turku University
• Oulu University
• LUT University
• Tampere University
• VTT

Read more about the funding terms and conditions

The funding terms and conditions describe the costs that Business Finland can fund, how we monitor your project costs, and how you should report on the progress of your project.

Funding terms

First and foremost, you should first contact your organization's innovation unit, if any.

Send your application and attachments via our online service. You can also keep track of the processing of your application there.

Each party of the joint project must submit their own application in Business Finland's online services. Each party must also submit Appendix 2. Innovation services' statement on intellectual property rights related to the project. In order to identify the joint project, the projects must be named with the same name.

Go to the online service

Set goals for your project

Set two to five interim goals for your project (for every six to ten months, depending on the duration of your project), as well as two to five final goals. The goals must be linked to the project's concrete results. The final goals will be agreed together with Business Finland. Business Finland will monitor the achievement of the goals.

Appendix 1. Project plan

Attach a project plan with your application. Enter the key points of the plan directly in designated fields on the application form, and attach a separate project plan (up to 20 pages) as a file with your application. Maximum length of the plan is 20 pages, pages exceeding the page limit are not reviewed. The list of references (no more than 2 pages) does not count towards the length of the plan.

The project plan must clearly describe the following:

• The background of the idea briefly: research and current status
• Activities related to the preparation of commercialization, key persons, the schedule and costs, as well as the percentage of these costs from total project costs.
• Activities related to applied research that supports the preparation of commercialization, key persons, the schedule, and costs.
• Communication activities, key persons, the schedule, and costs.
• Organizations planning a joint project must have a joint project plan, describing the parties' synergy benefits and common goals, and the tasks and resources of all parties. In joint projects, the minimum requirement is that commercialization preparation costs account for a total of 40% of the total approved project costs regarding all organizations. If the project does not proceed in accordance with the plan and goals, funding will be discontinued for all parties to the joint project.

Appendix 2. Innovation Services' statement on intellectual property rights related to the project

1. Explain the ownership of intellectual property rights relevant to the project and their transferability to the university? Has the invention disclosure(s) been processed by the university? If rights transfers are needed, can they be handled before the start of the project?
2. Describe what kind of preliminary freedom-to-operate assessment (e.g. Patent Landscape) has been done and what were its results.
3. Describe what kind of IPR protection measures have been taken and what their status is.
4. Report what other relevant rights the university has, which the university is ready to hand over to a company that may be founded after the project is finished.

Evaluation of applications

Our specialists will evaluate each research project seeking the preparation of commercialization as a whole. Other competing funding applications will also be taken into account in the evaluation.

Key evaluation areas are:

• Project team's experience and skills level and commitment
  • The team has strong research background related to the field.
  • The person in charge of the commercialization is member of the team and an employee of the research organization with strong previous experience in commercialization and/or business.
  • The team is committed to commercialization preparations and at least some of the team members are interested in entrepreneurship in the potential company to be established.
• The scalability of business and business potential.
• Protectability
• The size of the targeted business activity.
• The project's impact on the development of significant international business or on society at large.
• The novelty and maturity rate of the technology or competence advanced in the project.
• The commercialization path described in the project plan and its level of realism; activities, resources, interim and final goals.
• The steering group's members and competence.
• Impact to sustainable development.

Use of results

The goal of Research to Business projects is to use research results in the form of new business.

New information produced in a project and related intellectual property rights are the research organization's property that it can assign to the user of the results for compensation.

After the research project, the results will be public. Before the results are made public, it must, however, be ensured that they do not hinder the generation of business due to prevented patenting or the publicity of business secrets, for example.

If a startup company is established to commercialize your project's idea, the project's goals will be considered to have been achieved, and project funding will be discontinued.

Eligible costs

All eligible costs must be in line with the project plan and linked to the fulfillment of the project. Eligible costs include:

• wages of persons working for the project
• indirect costs (general costs and indirect personnel costs)
• reasonable travel expenses
• costs of materials and supplies
• purchased services that are necessary for the implementation of the project and in accordance with the rules of public procurement and the administration of the funding recipient

Eligible costs are defined in more detail in the general terms and conditions of public funding (pdf).