Innovation to market | London Business School

I2M 2026 Researcher Application Now Live

About

The Innovation to Market (I2M) course is an MBA for-credit elective at London Business School that is open to external applicants, entirely free of charge.

The I2M elective was born out of the realisation that we live in an era where technology-based innovation is more important than ever before and that the most successful businesses will be the ones who are able to bring promising technologies to market ahead of competitors.

Increasingly, LBS students want to join early-stage technology-based businesses and partner with researchers to bring great technologies to market. Likewise, many researchers want to commercialise their research and are looking for partners with the business skills to make this happen.

The I2M course builds well-balanced teams around technologies that are ripe for commercialisation. We bring together researchers and LBS students to form teams that will develop - and maybe even begin to execute on - a lean commercial strategy for an innovative and impactful technology.

Previous cohorts have work on technologies that cover multiple sectors and fields, including healthcare, cleantech, AI, and deeptech broadly. Some of the teams formed during I2M are still working together in the startup they founded.

Who is it for?

This experiential LBS elective is for university-based research scientists and LBS students interested in working with early inventions and technologies that are looking to solve a huge problem.

The external researchers will typically be ‘early career’ (late PhD or postdoc) and wondering whether or not to follow an academic career path. They will have developed a technology and have ideas on how it could be used to create social or economic gain and will be ready to invest the necessary time and energy in that process. However, they will realise that they lack the experience and tools to do so themselves and want to gain that expertise. They will also welcome the opportunity to work, as equals, with a team of experienced LBS students to produce a commercial strategy for their technology.

LBS students are all ‘post-experience’, meaning that they have years of experience in a wide swathe of sectors. Many will be hoping to move into leadership roles, for which they will need a solid understanding of how organisations and markets innovate, operate and compete. They are all in their second year of study and want to apply what they’ve learnt about driving technology-based innovation by working on a new technology from the ground up.

Course structure

Three taught sessions
Project
Team presentations
Socials

During the ‘taught’ element of the course, you will learn a robust methodology for taking a new technology to market. Since virtually all technologies require substantial investment – often over multiple rounds – we will explore technology, market and financial strategies. Participants should commit to attending all these sessions in person and preparing (case and other readings) in advance.

Timeline

There are three extended taught sessions followed by a major joint project and a final day of presentations. We anticipate that the time commitment for both LBS and external participants will be as follows:

Prior to each class session, there will be a case preparation breakout session from 11:30 to 12:00. This will be followed by networking sessions that occur before and after class sessions from 12:00 to 12:45 and 15:30 to 16:00. We ask that participants bring their own lunch, but coffee and tea will be provided.

January 2026 – March 2026

Location: London, face-to-face

Important Dates

Three taught sessions run on Thursday afternoons (12:45 to 15:30). Case preparation breakout sessions will occur before class from 11:30 to 12:00. Networking sessions will occur before and after class sessions from 12:00 to 12:45 and 15:30 to 16:00.

We ask that participants bring their own lunch, but coffee and tea will be provided.

8 January 2026
15 January 2026
22 January 2026
Voluntary, online rehearsals with faculty will be offered in early March in different slots.

The dates for scheduled working meetings with your team (hybrid) are:

Thursdays 29 January and 5 February – 12:45-15:30
Fridays 20 and 27 February, 6 March – 11:00-12:30

Final presentations/pitch to investors: Friday 13 March from 8:45 to 14:00

Programme content

In the classroom
During the project
Course objectives and learning outcomes

Teaching at LBS is interactive and based on discussion of real cases, from which we construct a general methodology for technology commercialisation. Before each session we distribute a case study that exemplifies the theme of the session. We create mixed study groups to discuss the case beforehand. Each case highlights a major decision point, which acts as a springboard for faculty-led class debate and discussion around an aspect of commercialisation. Often, we invite an experienced guest speaker to share their own reflections on the theme. For these sessions, we have selected case studies that relate to early-stage technology commercialisation. We do not major on any one sector; rather we draw general learnings from the specific cases, developing analytic frameworks and methodologies that can be applied to any ‘ripe’ technology.

Course director

The course is led by Professor Luisa Alemany.

Luisa Alemany

Associate Professor of Management Practice in Strategy and Entrepreneurship; Academic Director, Institute of Entrepreneurship and Private Capital

Experience

Luisa Alemany is an Associate Professor of Management Practice and Academic Director of the Institute of Entrepreneurship and Private Capital at London Business School. She is also a Fellow at St Hugh’s College, Oxford University. She was formerly at ESADE Business School and a Visiting Professor at Saïd Business School, University of Oxford. Her main areas of interest are Entrepreneurial Finance, Venture Capital, Entrepreneurial Education, Business Angels and Venture Philanthropy. She holds an MBA from Stanford University and a PhD in Economics and Business from Universidad Complutense (Madrid).

Luisa began her career at Procter & Gamble in Madrid. She subsequently worked for McKinsey & Co in Madrid, Barcelona and Lisbon. Later, she worked at Goldman Sachs’ Investment Banking Division, in the venture capital fund Europ@Web and as a Senior Associate of the American private equity fund The Carlyle Group in its European buyout team.

Luisa was the director of the ESADE Entrepreneurship Institute for nine years (2009-2017) and the academic sponsor of ESADE BAN (Business Angels Network), awarded the Best BAN in Europe in 2016. She is a director on the board of Newton Venture Program, a JV between LBS and LocalGlobe to bring diversity to the venture ecosystem. She sits on the investment committee of a deep tech scaleup venture capital fund in Spain and of impact investing Oxfam EDP fund. She is an advisor to two European investors with Fund of Fund vehicles (one investing in Europe and the other in Emerging Markets). In May 2023 she launched MELBA, Middle East LBS Business Angels, in Dubai. She was part of Rising Tide Europe I and II, the first European Women-only business angels’ fund. She is a member of the Academic Board of EBAN, the European Business Angels Network.

Her research has been published in top journals, including Harvard Business Review, and she has written several books, such as the award-winning “Entrepreneurial Finance: The Art and Science of Growing Ventures” (Cambridge University Press, 2018), the first European textbook on the topic that awarded “Most Promising New Textbook” in 2021 by TTA.

She has taught at the Master of Science, MBA and executive education level in different programs in London, Oxford, Barcelona, Madrid, Dubai, Amsterdam, Milan, Miami, Mexico and Shanghai. She received the Best Teacher Award 2017, ESADE’s Executive Master in Finance and two of her case studies Barcelona base “Scytl” and Uganda social enterprise “Banapads” were honoured with Case Awards by EFMD.

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Commitment

Though this course is a substantial commitment of time, it is an excellent example of getting out what you’re willing to put in.

We do not charge external researchers anything for participation in the course – it is entirely free. However, there are two quid pro quos:

We expect researchers to bring with them and be ready to ‘share’ a nascent technological opportunity that forms the basis of the project work. This opportunity should be ‘real’ and something the researcher genuinely wishes to develop. As part of the application process, we will require researchers to showcase the technology and demonstrate their commitment to its commercial development.

We expect external participants to commit a similar amount of time to the project as their LBS peers, attending each session, participating fully in project work and being fully involved in the preparation and delivery of the final presentation.

We understand that this level of commitment is substantial. However, for motivated researchers, this time should represent opportunity rather than cost.

Since so much depends on full participation of external participants, each will be asked to sign a binding Memorandum of Commitment with the School and each other prior to final acceptance.

Criteria for external applicants

We anticipate that research applicants should:

Be late stage PhD, or post-doctoral
Have developed a technology to a place of considerable robustness – preferably resulting in coverage in peer-reviewed publications
Already have an application for this technology in mind and have some evidence that they are willing to explore its commercial potential
Be able/willing to share details of the technology with their MBA team and at a general (non-confidential) level with the entire cohort.

Intellectual property and continued MBA involvement:

We fully appreciate sensitivities over the ownership of the intellectual property belonging to the researchers and their institutions. There are, understandably, two main concerns:

Some IP relating to the technology may not yet have been protected and premature discussions may act as disclosure, impacting the granting of a patent
It is entirely possible that the LBS students will contribute to a venture in a meaningful way – opening up the possibility of some future claim on shares or ‘intellectual assets’ of the venture.

The LBS students will act like any other external consultants to whom you might disclose IP and discuss your strategy. At the outset of the course, we will ask LBS students to sign an agreement that preserves your rights. The agreement itself has been specifically commissioned from a leading UK-based IP law firm.

At this point it is assumed that the team members will go their own ways. Should any teams stay wholly or partially intact then they will need to reach a new agreement between them, for which they should solicit their own legal advice.

This arrangement does not obviate the need by researchers to be sensitive to IP disclosure to those not in their team and to external parties (including the judges at the final presentations). You should always operate on a ‘need to know’ basis, ‘black-boxing’ the technology where you can.

MBAs - Researcher Agreement

LBS - Researcher Agreement

How to apply?

The researcher application for the Spring 2026 session is now live. Please apply below.

Apply here

Questions? Please email the I2M team at: I2M@london.edu

FAQs

The end point for the course is in the development of a commercial strategy for the proposed business – to the point where you’re ready to deploy resources for commercial development. Often these resources (including cash) will need to be sourced externally. If you have already raised external finance then you presumably have a commercial strategy so this course will be too ‘late’ for you – and be a distraction. Likewise, if you already have a team in place then the LBS students will add little value over and above. Conversely, if your technology is too early (e.g. not yet reduced to practice) then you’re probably too early to benefit from the course – your technology will be too nebulous and its capabilities too vague; your may have great ‘science’ but not yet a ‘technology’ to share.
LBS students will need to team up with a researcher to work on their technology (toward the final presentation in March). We anticipate teams will form in the first two weeks of the course. Those teams (of 2-4) form spontaneously. We anticipate that teams will form around all the technologies, but we cannot guarantee that this will be the case. If for any reason a team does not crystallise around a technology, then that technology does not go forward to the next (commercial strategy) part of the course. However, the researcher may go through as part of another team. This is the same ‘protocol’ as LBS adopts for all its courses.

Contact us

For any further enquiries, please contact the I2M team via email at the below contact:

I2M@london.edu