Business Readiness Level

Business Readiness Level

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What is Business Readiness Level?

Bad business often kills good technology. Our team’s broad experience with the Small Business Innovative Research (SBIR), Manufacturing Technology (ManTech), and Defense Production Act Title III programs shows that science & technology development companies are often more challenged by business issues than technology or manufacturing issues. Unless the technology under development can eventually be commercialized as a self-sustaining business (or business unit), achieving Technology Readiness Level (TRL) and Manufacturing Readiness Level (MRL) goals won’t be enough to transition the technology to the customer.

Business Readiness Level (BRL) is a tool for identifying, measuring, and managing business risk. BRL is intended primarily for evaluating the business risk associated with small businesses (or small organizations in medium and large businesses) that are trying to commercialize their new technologies.

The Business Readiness Level (BRL) tool adds a third dimension to program risk management, supplementing TRL and MRL in the program manager’s toolkit. The BRL tool defines twelve business risk factors for which a company and their technology can be assessed. Similar to TRL and MRL, the risk factors are objectively scored by evaluators who are familiar with the business and technology being assessed.

The BRL tool is broadly applicable to any science and technology development program that wants to manage business risk. In the following pages, we’ll describe the purpose of the BRL tool and how BRL integrates with TRL and MRL as a third dimension in the program manager’s risk measurement and management toolkit.

To learn more about Business Readiness Level, click on the "Why Use BRL" and "How BRL Works" tabs at the top of the page. If you have more questions, or would like assistance in using BRL, write to us by clicking on the "Contact Us" tab and filling in the feedback form. We'll be happy to hear from you.