Is It a Project or a Business? Perspectives on the Consideration of Sustainability

Grant funded software projects have an incomplete view of the ecosystem in which they will need to become sustainable. Grant recipients should behave like an entrepreneurial organization. A useful view of this can be found in the business model canvas , which provides a template to 9 key aspects of operating a business. These 9 aspects can be grouped into 3 major categories: i) feasibility to deliver the solution, ii) attractiveness of the solution to its intended audiences, and iii) economic viability of delivering the solution. Grant recipients tend to be highly focused on the first of these 3 major categories; yet, it has the least to do with the long term sustainability of a project. Specific examples drawn from the speaker’s experiences in technology commercialization, nanoHUB, HUBzero®, and the Science Gateways Community Institute’s Incubator program.