Getting funding is a big deal. For a MedTech or diagnostics company, it often follows years of scientific work, product development, clinical planning, regulatory preparation and persistence through setbacks that most people outside the organisation never see. Funding can extend runway, accelerate trials, support regulatory submissions, scale manufacturing, build the team or move the product materially closer to market.

So yes, funding is worth celebrating. But after more than 20 years working across sales, market development, product management, commercial leadership and product marketing, I’ve learned that technical progress and commercial progress rarely move at the same speed. A company can become more investable, more clinically credible and more technically advanced while the market remains unclear about what the product is, who it is for, why it matters and what needs to change before adoption can happen.

I call the distance between those two realities the Commercialisation Gap. It’s the space between progress inside the organisation and readiness outside it: the product, evidence and funding move forward, while customer understanding, market confidence, sales capability and the pathway to adoption lag behind.

The gap doesn’t mean the innovation is weak. It usually means the commercial foundations haven’t developed at the same pace as the product.

The gap appears long before launch

Commercialisation is often spoken about as the stage that follows product development, clinical evidence and regulatory approval, but in practice the market is already being shaped while those milestones are underway. Customer needs influence product requirements, intended use influences evidence, pricing assumptions affect channel viability, and early investor or distributor conversations begin creating expectations. Even decisions that appear operational, such as packaging, onboarding or how a product is demonstrated, can shape trust and adoption later.

The earlier those connections are recognised, the more freedom the organisation has to influence them. Once product requirements are locked, the evidence plan is committed, a distributor network is in motion or an external story has gained credibility, commercial teams can find themselves trying to work around earlier decisions rather than helping shape them.

That’s why the Commercialisation Gap isn’t simply the difficult period between regulatory approval and the first sale. It can begin much earlier, whenever the product is advancing faster than the organisation’s understanding of the customer, the market and the pathway to adoption.

The gap changes shape, but the pattern repeats

I didn’t arrive at this idea from one launch or one company. I began recognising the same pattern across very different organisations, customers and commercial models: a strong product or worthy idea moved forward, but the system required to translate it into confident action still had to be built.

Commercial systems do not build themselves

I entered university on a full scholarship to study forensic science and applied chemistry, expecting that my future would be in a laboratory. While studying, I built a branch office from scratch for a premium direct-sales kitchen knife brand. I negotiated the lease, arranged the utilities, advertised, recruited and trained a commission-only sales team, and created the operating rhythm behind performance. The office became the number one branch in Australia, but the more important outcome was that I realised I belonged in the commercial world. A high-quality product and an established brand didn’t create local success on their own; the people, process, coaching, accountability and confidence to ask for the sale had to be built around them.

Years later, the same lesson appeared at a much larger scale when a global ophthalmic surgical portfolio was divested and a new company had to be established around trusted product brands. Customer confidence had to be maintained while regulatory registrations were transferred, distributors were integrated, an 800-plus SKU portfolio was managed, further company and product acquisitions were absorbed, and a new corporate brand earned credibility. The regional business ultimately tripled in revenue while maintaining strong profitability. Commercialisation in that context wasn’t a launch campaign; it was the operational discipline of turning products, relationships and infrastructure into a sustainable business.

Adoption is a behaviour change problem

In a government-funded behaviour change program across construction and mining, I saw that awareness alone rarely changes what people do. Different stakeholders had different motivations, levels of influence and barriers to participation, so a single message couldn’t move the whole system. The same principle has appeared repeatedly in healthcare: a surgeon may understand the evidence but resist changing workflow, a laboratory may see technical differentiation without recognising enough operational value to switch, and a consumer may believe a product is important without acting until the need becomes immediate.

That’s why adoption can’t be reduced to communication. It requires an understanding of the behaviour being asked of the customer, the current alternative, the practical and emotional friction involved, and the people whose confidence or approval influences the decision. The product may solve the problem, but the commercial pathway still has to make change feel possible, worthwhile and safe.

The first sale is not the finish line

In preventative diagnostics, more than half of revenue came from returning customers, which made repeat behaviour impossible to treat as an afterthought. Product launches, education, the digital experience and lifecycle communications all influenced whether customers understood their results, acted on them and returned. Pricing decisions mattered too. Frequent promotions could generate short-term demand, but they also trained some customers to wait for the next sale rather than choose the membership model designed to support ongoing testing.

A later category-creating personal medical device launch reinforced the same point at greater scale. Most customers were buying this type of product for the first time, and the business generated more than $25 million in revenue, but awareness alone couldn’t produce that outcome. The product story, education, pricing, channels, purchase experience, membership, retention and replacement journey all had to work together. Commercialisation doesn’t end at conversion; it continues through use, confidence, repeat behaviour, renewal and advocacy.

Customer insight has more value before the product is fixed

At an early-stage healthcare venture builder, customer segmentation, behavioural research, use cases and the value proposition were inputs into what a connected biosensor MVP should become and which commercial opportunity was worth pursuing. They weren’t downstream marketing tasks. That work made the cost of late customer thinking very clear: once the product, evidence and operating assumptions are fixed, market insight can help explain what exists, but it has far less power to improve it.

The same principle applies to technically sophisticated molecular diagnostics. Platform differentiation still has to be translated into laboratory workflow, clinical utility and a commercially useful reason to change. Strong science and regulatory approval can create credibility, but adoption depends on whether customers can recognise the value in their own environment and whether the product has been shaped to deliver it there.

The products, customers and business models have been different, but the recurring question has remained the same: what has to happen between believing in the innovation internally and seeing it adopted in the real world?

Commercialisation is a system, not a handoff

This is why I think the word “marketing” can sometimes be too small for the problem an organisation is trying to solve. Marketing outputs matter, but a website, brochure or campaign can’t compensate for a product that’s difficult to position, evidence that doesn’t support the value customers care about, pricing that undermines the channel, or a buying process the organisation hasn’t understood.

The exact mix varies by product, market and stage, but commercialisation can span product requirements, evidence, positioning, pricing, market selection, channel strategy, customer experience, sales and distributor capability, onboarding, retention, reimbursement, forecasting and operational readiness. It isn’t a definitive list, and no one function owns all of it. The work lies in understanding how the elements interact and ensuring the organisation makes decisions as part of one commercial system rather than as a series of disconnected workstreams.

The commercial pathway also changes by stage. A pre-MVP company may need customer insight, use-case definition and commercial requirements. A business approaching regulatory approval may need launch sequencing, market positioning, pricing, channel readiness and sales enablement. A company already in market may discover that the gap sits in adoption, repeat use, retention, distributor performance or the ability to expand into a new geography.

There’s no universal playbook. There is, however, a recurring need for someone to hold the customer and commercial thread across the organisation, recognise where progress is becoming disconnected and help leadership decide what needs to be built next.

Where teams get stuck

The Commercialisation Gap often becomes visible through apparently separate problems. Different people describe the product in different ways, the website speaks to investors rather than buyers, clinical evidence is strong but the commercially important benefit wasn’t measured, distributors have enthusiasm without the story, training or tools to create demand, and regulatory approval is approaching while pricing, onboarding and sales readiness remain unresolved.

Sometimes the product launches and the gap appears afterwards: sales cycles stretch beyond the forecast, interested customers don’t change behaviour, the first purchase doesn’t translate into repeat use, or a strategically signed channel partner fails to prioritise the product. Promotional activity may create traffic, but if the business hasn’t built the systems needed to convert, support and retain customers, demand leaks out of the commercial pathway.

None of these automatically means the strategy has failed. They’re often signs that one part of the organisation has progressed faster than the commercial system around it. The danger comes when each symptom is treated as a standalone marketing or sales problem rather than evidence of a wider disconnect.

The earlier you see it, the more you can influence

The best time to address the Commercialisation Gap isn’t when everything is known. That moment rarely arrives. It’s while the organisation still has enough flexibility to shape the product, evidence, market story and pathway to adoption.

That doesn’t mean hiring a full commercial team on day one. Early-stage companies may need experienced input at specific decision points: before product requirements or a clinical protocol are locked, before pricing or distributor terms become embedded, before the market story starts circulating externally, or before regulatory approval creates pressure to launch immediately.

The right capability may be internal, advisory, project-based or fractional, depending on the stage and the decisions being made. What matters is that commercial thinking is represented early enough to influence the outcome, rather than arriving later to package decisions that have already been made.

Questions worth asking

If your organisation is moving closer to launch, adoption or scale, these are the questions I would encourage the leadership team to discuss:

1. Can everyone explain the product, priority customer and value in the same clear way?

2. What behaviour, workflow or purchasing decision are we asking the customer to change?

3. Which parts of the evidence support approval, and which parts support adoption?

4. Have pricing and channel decisions been tested against willingness to pay, perceived value and partner economics?

5. Do sales teams, distributors and early advocates have the education, tools and confidence to represent the product well?

6. What happens after the first sale: onboarding, use, support, repeat behaviour, renewal or expansion?

7. Which commercial decisions are becoming difficult to change, and who is holding the customer and commercial thread across them?

The answers don’t need to be perfect. The value lies in putting the connected questions on the table before launch pressure turns them into separate emergencies.