Deep tech Start-ups and market opportunities framing: an exploratory research

Deep tech start-ups (DTS) are entrepreneurial initiatives oriented to develop technological advances with the potential to create their markets or disrupt existing industries. Grounding on cutting-edge breaking scientific and basic research, they often originate or spin-off from universities or public research centres, where a breakthrough on the technology front typically enables new applications. Despite their economic and social potential, they face several obstacles to success, due to the degree of novelty of technology and market, the need for huge financial resources, the time lag between technological development and market entry. New technologies stemming from basic research very often open a wide span of potential applications, and the founders’ team capability to manage the technology-to-market linking, assumes a critical role in the development path of DTS. Combining a focused literature review with a case study of two DTS stemming from the Italian Institute of Technology, our study aims to explore how the process of identifying, framing, and evaluating the different technology-market links is managed.