Bridging the valley of death: Lessons from an entrepreneurial program

Nowadays, the governments and the private initiative destine budget and modify their regulations in favour of innovation, entrepreneurship, and scientific commercialization. Some mechanisms emerge as the bridge between research and the market. Their function is to support academics and researchers to cross the valley of death and start new science-based ventures. We analysed Binational Innovation Nodes (NoBI), a governmental program as a bridge to translate research into the market. This program aims to boost science and technology-based entrepreneurship through customer discovery. We describe and analyse the implementation of this program. Our findings highlight two essential functions of this kind of entrepreneurial program. First, help to validate and discard research on less time. Secondly, this program helps to line research to market, preparing research to go to the commercialization phase. Also, this program has an impact beyond the validation of technologies, changing the mentality of the scientist.