Technology development · Independent perspective
From technical promise to a useful product
A practical way to connect scientific evidence with application needs and the next development decision.
Nate Shakouri · September 2026 · 3 minute read
Begin with the application
A promising result becomes easier to evaluate when the intended use is specific. Who would use the technology? What job must it do? Under what conditions, and against which existing alternative?
That framing changes which properties matter. A catalyst may need a balance of activity, lifetime, reproducibility, and manufacturing practicality. A useful first brief identifies the application and the few constraints that could determine whether development makes sense.
Separate the evidence from the expectation
Describe what has actually been demonstrated, including the conditions and the measurement method. Then list the proposed benefits that remain assumptions. This creates a shared basis for discussion across scientific, engineering, and business teams.
A publication, a laboratory result, a model, and a product demonstration answer different questions. Connecting them carefully makes a development narrative more credible and reveals where additional evidence would help.
Choose the next decision before the next experiment
A test plan is more useful when each activity is connected to a decision. What result would support continuing? What result would lead to a different design, another application, or a pause?
Consider a generic materials project. If reproducibility is the largest uncertainty, another peak-performance demonstration may contribute less than a carefully controlled comparison across batches. The right next step depends on the question that could change the development path.
Give the commercial questions equal space
Alongside technical performance, ask how the technology would be adopted, what integration it needs, what resources development requires, and which partners could provide missing capabilities. These are questions to investigate, with evidence appropriate to each one.
My preferred output is a concise decision brief: the application, the evidence, the important assumptions, the options, and the next step. It gives people with different backgrounds a common starting point.