Technology Transfer Pipeline: TRL 1-9 & the Valley of Death

Pipeline Controls

R&D funding rate 50%

Licensing deal quality 50%

New inventions / cycle 2

Portfolio

In pipeline

Reached market

Killed / failed

Licensing revenue

$0M

Watch TRL 4-6: the "valley of death" — prototypes with no revenue yet, hardest to fund, highest failure rate.

How it works

Every invention here climbs a 9-rung Technology Readiness Level (TRL) scale, the framework NASA and the EU use to grade how close a technology is to real-world use:

TRL 1-3  Basic research → proof of concept
TRL 4-6  Lab prototype → validated in relevant environment  ← valley of death
TRL 7-9  System demonstration → qualified → market-ready

Each cycle, every active project has a chance to advance one TRL, stall, or be killed. The advance probability follows a funding-modulated logistic curve:

P(advance) = base[TRL] × (0.4 + 0.9 × fundingRate)
P(kill)    = risk[TRL] × (1.5 − 0.9 × fundingRate)

risk[TRL] peaks sharply at TRL 4-6 — the classic "valley of death": research grants have dried up, but the product is not yet proven enough for investors or a production line. This is the single biggest reason real inventions never reach market, regardless of how good the underlying science is.

R&D funding rate — raises advancement odds and cuts the kill rate everywhere, but costs proportionally more per cycle.
Licensing deal quality — sets how much revenue each project earns on reaching TRL 9 (a weak deal licenses cheap; a strong one captures more value for the same invention).
New inventions / cycle — how many fresh TRL-1 projects enter the pipeline from the lab each tick.

Real-world relevance: this loop — spawn, advance, stall in the valley, or die — is exactly what technology-transfer offices at universities and national labs manage when deciding which patents to fund, license, or abandon.

Research (TRL 1-3) Valley of death (TRL 4-6) Market-ready (TRL 7-9)

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Technology Transfer Pipeline: TRL 1-9 and the Valley of Death