Key discoveries and their significance

The empirical research provided relatively satisfactory answers to research questions. The questions were the following:

1. How does a company commercialize high technology products or services to international markets in the 2020s?

2. Why problems occur in international commercialization process of high technology in the 2020s?

3. How can the identified challenges be solved with the available means from companies themselves and with the resources provided by external stakeholders?

Regarding RQ1, the commercialization process nowadays mainly follows the structure that has been established in prior research and is described in Chapter 2.2.3. It starts with an idea or problem

recognized by a company staff member or a customer which leads to initial product development through several estimations of idea’s feasibility with different means. Iterations and partial overlap of phases are common. Starting phase is followed by e.g., assembling test groups, collecting feedback, product development iteration rounds, figuring out supply chains and marketing channels, arranging external or internal financing, and applying to pass regulations. During the ending phase companies mostly finalize product design, secure supply chains, do actual sales work, estimate marketing effectiveness, and provide product support.

Compared to past studies highlighted divergences are constant customer presence throughout the whole commercialization process and increased difficulty in effective online marketing. Other underlined attributes were digitalization, increased global competition and regulations, and the overall accelerated speed of change that also requires companies to commercialize faster. The importance of networks and collaboration with customers is emphasized in various phases and all interviewees stated that engaging in open innovation projects has been beneficial to them. Regarding internationalization the results showed that companies typically first commercialize their products to Finnish markets before going abroad despite having internationalization already in mind.

Commercialization process varies strongly in different international locations and therefore comprehensive preparations, networks and localizing of marketing and sales is crucial.

Regarding RQ2, several problems occur throughout the commercialization process and possible reasons for the challenges are divided to internal and external factors in the research. Internal factors include (1) unclear and unstructured commercialization processes, (2) lack of internationalization experience, (2) lack of marketing expertise, (3) unleveraged digitalization, (4) insufficient IPR utilization and (5) not being aware of theory regarding commercialization process. Furthermore, (6) concise marketing for an innovative hard-to-define novelty product is challenging.

Reasons for commercialization problems that derive from external factors include (1) increased regulations in both domestic and international markets, (2) increased global competition, (3) increased speed of change in market situations, (4) differing cultures in international markets, (5)

insufficient private capital market in Finland, (6) liability of smallness, (7) poor regional open innovation culture in past years (according to one interviewee) and (8) too few internationally successful B2B-saas-companies from Finland (according to one interviewee).

Regarding RQ3, the research provided several means how to solve the mentioned problem areas. The solutions include (1) having concise and versatile teams with required experience from the subject, (2) formulating written processes with clear phases, (3) seeking possibilities to leverage from digitalization in internal processes, (4) engaging in open innovation projects, (5) developing regional culture regarding commercialization services, (6) developing external innovation services to facilitate small companies’ access to bigger customer entities, (7) fostering mentoring culture, and (8) networking and building position in networks. More detailed answers to the research questions can be found in Chapter 4.4.

In the end the research findings did not reveal many surprises that could not be anticipated after exploring prior research on the topic. The summarized answers appear a little self-evident mostly confirming discoveries from previous research, but the practical details are what makes the results interesting. By far the most intriguing discoveries of the research were the ones found in between the actual research questions: what are the actual problems regarding commercialization process and the practical guidelines to resolve the challenges? The interviews provided several insights that went beyond the research questions. Therefore, the discussion regarding the research results in Chapter 4.3. includes several direct quotations from the interviews. They appeared to provide such pragmatic perspective to high technology commercialization that leaving them out for the sake of demarcation would have been a pity.

It could be carefully suggested that the research engendered three relatively novel and central findings regarding commercialization process of high technology in the 2020s: (1) constant presence of customer, (2) flexible commercialization, and (3) multiple commercialization process rails.

Customer presence was highlighted in multiple occasions during every interview, the idea of flexible commercialization appears as a potential concept in the unpredictable business environment of the

2020s, and multiple commercialization processes was also brought up by the interviewees, but it received little if not any attention in the theory that was gathered for the literature review.

The research did not achieve its objectives in the sense that it did not explore internationalization aspect of commercialization process as much as initially was intended. However, it reached its goals in the sense that it provided satisfactory answers to the research questions, confirmed prior discoveries regarding commercialization process, its challenges and solutions, and contributed some fresh perspective which can be utilized in future research of the topic and in actual commercialization activities. In addition, the literature review presents a concise summary of how to scrutinize high technology and innovation from the 2020s perspective. Especially a fledgling company, a person planning to establish a business or commercialize an innovation can obtain useful understanding by reading the literature review and the results of the empirical research. At best it might help avoid a few pitfalls and facilitate successful commercialization.