What happens at each TRL stage, what usually goes wrong, and where you burn the most resources without realising it. The TRL framework is universal, but how it applies to physical industrial products is a different game, and nobody tells you about it.
The TRL framework is not academic bureaucracy. It is the common language that stops an R&D team, a finance department and an investment committee from speaking different languages about the same project.
The most expensive mistake in industrial product development is "almost there" syndrome. The technical team declares TRL 7 when the project is really at TRL 5. The consequence is that budget is requested to industrialise something that does not yet work in a relevant environment, suppliers are locked in and delivery commitments are signed. Six to twelve months later, the project goes backwards. The lost time is the visible part. The lost internal credibility is the expensive part.
TRL is also the language public funding demands. CDTI, ACCIÓ, Horizon Europe and the rest of the programmes ask for the project’s starting and ending TRL. An inconsistent declaration gets the application thrown out. An optimistic one commits you to delivering what you cannot. Knowing the real TRL is a precondition for asking for money with any judgement.
There is a structural reason why the nine levels are linear and cannot be skipped: each one validates something the previous level could not. Skipping TRL 5 and 6 — the relevant environment — and going straight from the lab to industrial manufacturing is the main cause of failure in physical products. What software fixes with a patch, hardware fixes with a new mould, a new regulatory validation and a new pilot run. TRL linearity is not a methodological whim. It is industrial discipline.
These three questions place you in one of four bands. The result suggests, with no commitment, which vitamINN agents make most sense at your current stage.
You are where it hurts most: the jump from the lab to a relevant environment. This is where it is decided whether the product scales or stays a demo.