Transitioning international development projects to sustainable businesses : the challenges in commercializing a research project and the engineer-entrepreneurs behind the product

Professionals that work on designing products and developing businesses for the developing world experience challenges unique to international development in addition to common challenges in product design and business development. However, there are far more professionals working in product development than in business development. Majority of international development projects come from research in academic institutions and the number of research-based spin-off start ups working on commercializing the technologies is significantly less than the number of other research-based spin-offs. This study looks at the characteristics of founders that transition products from research projects to companies, their motivations, the challenges they face, and how they overcame the challenges through a case study method.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Mechanical Engineering.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2012

Author dc:creator

• Cho, Hallie Sue

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Maria C. Yang.

• Mechanical Engineering.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/74457

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/74457