Believe it or not research teams are not always marketing wizards, and even the best results can have little impact if the potential users don’t understand the value of the solution. So the DHS Science and Technology Directorate is putting a representative from all the research teams in the recently awarded contracts through SRI’s Value Creation workshop. I attended the two-day workshop this week.

The group arrived from a variety of different organizations - academia, small companies, massive companies, very different research projects, and different levels of experience doing this sort of thing. And I think it was fair to say many arrived as skeptics. SRI put us through a set of instructions and exercises in a structured process to describe the need, approach, benefits and competition of our projects. First in a 1-minute elevator pitch, then adding more elements in a 3-minute presentation and finally a 5-minute presentation. As you can imagine the brevity forced focus.

A key part of the process was the way the attendee and teacher feedback was presented and acted on in the class.

It is hard to do the workshop justice. It is a combination of the environment, energy, process, materials, teachers, and fellow students. The best way to convey it is every attendee had dramatic improvement in their ability to present the value of their project. Dramatic is not hyperbole here. You had to see it to believe it.

Hats off to DHS S&T for realizing the importance of this effort to maximizing the impact of their research dollars and SRI for a strong program. [FD: Obviously DHS S&T has funded Digital Bond research projects]