Navigating the ​“Valley of Death”: How CPI helps innovations succeed

At these critical stages, an idea may soar to success or crash down into the ​“Valley of Death”. What you do when you encounter this stage can make or break your product. You may need a helping hand, and that’s where CPI can help as a trusted partner to get your innovation over the line.

What is the Valley of Death?

The ​“Valley of Death” exists across many sectors but is most pronounced in product development, particularly for innovations combining synthetic and natural materials, such as in engineering biology. The valley usually comes after research and development; when a working prototype needs to be produced for testing or scaled up. At these points, identifying and accounting for costs, equipment, processes and risks is essential. Problems at this stage can push a product into the ​“Valley of Death”. Even those products that do make it out can spend a long time navigating the valley, rapidly accruing costs. 

The ​“Valley of Death” is more than a metaphor for the difficulties faced by individual innovators; it represents systemic challenges in the innovation landscape. These include funding gaps, inadequate infrastructure, and insufficient alignment between research and commercialisation. Many promising ideas falter here, not due to a lack of potential but because the ecosystem lacks the mechanisms to carry them forward. Bridging this gap is essential for fostering innovation that not only thrives commercially but also addresses societal challenges. 

Key pitfalls to avoid

There are several key factors that can determine whether a product will be successful, some of which, surprisingly enough, have nothing to do with the quality of an idea. 

Here are three challenges innovators may face along the way: 

• The risks of scaling up technology. There are significant costs associated with optimising manufacturing processes and ensuring a product can be produced reliably and at scale. As the cost and complexity increases, the risks increase as well. Securing funding at this critical development stage is often a major hurdle, particularly for deep tech ventures. These projects face heightened barriers, including long development cycles, complex technologies, and high upfront costs. CPI addresses these challenges by offering cutting-edge facilities and technical expertise, enabling innovators to de-risk their projects and demonstrate feasibility. By supporting regulatory navigation and pilot-scale testing, we make the path to market smoother for even the most challenging innovations.
• Language and motivation barriers. There’s an old phrase that says, ​“innovation happens at interfaces”. To facilitate that, interfaces between disciplines with different skills and expertise are important. However, people working in cross-functional teams coming from different disciplines often use niche jargon or language. Academic language often differs significantly from the terminology used in product development, which in turn contrasts with the language of industry or manufacturing.
• Emotion. Beyond the language or motivation barrier there is also emotion. Innovators are passionate about their ideas, understandably, but this can lead them to getting too attached to them. It becomes an emotional battle to protect their ​“baby”. That can prevent them from taking outside advice to change something or let it go, especially when talking to people from other teams about how to get your product through scale-up or manufacturing. By stepping outside this mindset and considering other perspectives, innovators can foster productive conversations that drive their ideas forward.

There are other factors that can suck ideas into the Valley, such as time and resource constraints, market uncertainties or even a lack of expertise in your team and collaborators. All are important parts to consider when building an investable business.

Why collaboration is key

Collaboration is key to bridging the ​“Valley of Death.” Success often depends on aligning the efforts of diverse stakeholders, including academia, industry, government, and investors. At CPI, we create the connections and partnerships that are essential for overcoming these challenges. By supporting collaboration, we help innovators break down silos, share resources, and develop strategies that accelerate the journey from idea to commercial success.

Crossing the Valley of Death with CPI

The ​“Valley of Death” can often be avoided with patience, careful planning, and a focus on refining ideas at a smaller scale before scaling up. The question should not be ​“how do I scale this up?” but ​“am I ready to scale this up?” 

The valley is also a checkpoint at which some ideas will fall, and others rise to success. That can be seen as a positive. It is just as important to help entrepreneurs and SMEs make decisions to stop or repurpose some projects, as it is to drive through other projects that have the best chance of being economically viable and creating a positive impact. 

Failure in the ​“Valley of Death” is not a setback; it’s a chance to learn and refine. At CPI, we help innovators extract valuable lessons from stalled projects, whether it’s identifying technical issues, refining business models, or pivoting to new applications. By lowering the cost of failure, we encourage resilience and innovation, ensuring that each experience strengthens the next attempt. 

At CPI, it’s our goal to help people pick those winning projects earlier and develop them quickly. And even if that project doesn’t make it out of the Valley of Death, there’s a lower cost to that failure, allowing you to revisit other ideas. 

We support businesses in translating their ideas into commercial products at any stage with expertise in a wide range of technologies and services across several markets. We also provide access to world-class facilities and equipment to help develop your process or product and demonstrate it is feasible for scaling up to market. That also means innovators don’t have to sink money into hardware or equipment that might not be needed down the line. 

Investors are critical allies in overcoming the ​“Valley of Death,” but they need confidence in the viability of their investments. CPI provides detailed technical validations, scalability testing, and market assessments that give investors the insights they need to commit. By reducing risk and showcasing feasibility, we ensure that innovations attract the support they need to succeed.