One team works in Robotics and the other in Systems Engineering and Management; and they share the ambition to take their R&D work to the market. This goal led them to participate in TechLaunch, an entrepreneurship bootcamp promoted by the UT Austin Portugal Program. Both INESC TEC research teams were selected for the initiative and had the opportunity to spend a week at UT Austin.
“We joined this initiative with two main goals: to understand whether the technologies and prototypes we developed for specific use cases meet the needs of potential users; and to test the idea that, by providing solutions to real market problems, there would be customers willing to buy the product,” explained Pedro Marques and Francisco Carneiro, researchers in Robotics who took part in the first edition of the TechLaunch bootcamp.
The same applied to Henrique Piqueiro, Pedro Senna, Ana Carolina Tavares and Romão Santos, who decided to join the initiative to “assess the commercial viability of a process optimisation technology based on discrete-event simulation developed at INESC TEC, and to understand whether it truly fits the industrial market,” explained the Systems Engineering and Management researchers.
Over several weeks, the researchers – together with other national research teams – learned about transferring science-based technology to the market; they benefited from specialised mentoring and had direct contact with business decision-makers in both Europe and the U.S.A. The bootcamp aimed to help participants develop skills to assess the commercial potential of their solutions and define strategies to introduce them to the market.
According to Henrique Piqueiro, Pedro Senna, Ana Carolina Tavares and Romão Santos, “TechLaunch helped us establish three key lessons: understanding the value of the solution from the customer’s perspective; benefiting from mentors with experience in technology transfer and company creation; and carrying out interviews with real decision-makers in Portugal and in the US. It was a concrete opportunity to test market assumptions, identify potential early users and clarify positioning strategies.”
The TechLaunch ended with a week at the University of Texas (Austin). This allowed the teams to engage directly with mentors, researchers and local entrepreneurs, and to discuss the potential of their technologies in the North American market. According to Pedro Marques and Francisco Carneiro, “the most striking aspect” of the stay was the culture of a city like Austin, which continues to grow as a technology and entrepreneurship hub. “By experiencing the entrepreneurial and optimistic mindset of Americans, it is easy to see how deeply the ‘American Dream’ is rooted in their culture. This helped us change our perspective on entrepreneurship and on taking risks for ideas we believe in,” they added.
The Systems Engineering and Management team also highlighted cultural differences. “Interviews with US companies showed clear differences compared to the European context, particularly a focus on immediate financial return, shorter decision-making cycles and, paradoxically, a lower current adoption of simulation tools. This international experience was crucial to understanding how to adapt the value proposition to different levels of digital and organisational maturity,” they explained.
After this experience, the journey ahead remains long: for Pedro Marques and Francisco Carneiro, the next steps involve making positioning decisions and carrying out financial analyses to define the most suitable business model. For Henrique Piqueiro, Pedro Senna, Ana Carolina Tavares and Romão Santos, the focus is on completing a functional prototype and launching pilot projects with two to three factories – to demonstrate the operational impact of the technology. In both cases, the goal is the same: to introduce science to the market.
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