Key Features
PITCH supports both sides of partnered innovation: people developing concepts and organizations working to discover, develop, evaluate, and advance them.
Researchers and inventors can strengthen emerging concepts with structured development, adaptive guidance, and evaluator-aware feedback. Innovation leaders, funders, and research organizations can increase signal into the opportunity funnel, scale developmental support, and focus scarce expertise and resources on the concepts most worth advancing.
Find, Develop, and Advance Stronger Opportunities
For innovation leaders, funders, research organizations, and others responsible for developing an opportunity pipeline, PITCH provides infrastructure to discover emerging ideas, communicate what matters, scale developmental support, and make better-informed decisions about where to invest attention and resources.
These capabilities are available through the PITCH Stakeholder membership.
1. Discover Emerging Capabilities
- •Discover emerging ideas and capabilities across distributed organizations and networks—not only past awards, projects, or known connections.
- •The Pitchfolio ecosystem is arranged thematically to browse opportunities by topic. Raw and emerging ideas are extracted into a a structured pitch template, and users leave virtual business cards to support discovery and follow-on engagement.
- •AI-assisted and database-driven matchmaking across pitches and problems.
- •Alerts when users respond to stakeholder-posted problems.
2. Signal Success Criteria and Institutional Priorities
- •Ability to define and publish structured problems or opportunity areas instead of passively receiving proposals.
- •Optional Key Performance Parameters (KPPs) and State-of-the-Art (SOTA) definitions to make expectations explicit without constraining creativity.
- •Problems evolve from descriptive to decision-ready, improving downstream evaluation efficiency.
3. Capture Capabilities Through Development
- •Automatically capture development snapshots of emerging capabilities throughout the organization
- •Meet users where they are with guided chat, targeted questions, or document upload—then structure what they provide for continued development and discovery.
- •Automatically create Projects from submissions so intake becomes the beginning of an evolving concept, not a one-time record.
- •Configure intake, deadlines, and visibility around the opportunity while maintaining a reusable, developing body of organizational intelligence.
4. Develop & Evaluate
- •Evaluate concepts against sponsor requirements, organizational priorities, or strategic goals and focus scarce expert attention where it can add the most value. Customize your evaluation criteria.
- •Evaluator personas that define perspective, tone, and expertise for consistent feedback.
- •Automated evaluation gates (minimum scores) to control access to advanced translation/execution workflows.
5. Understand Problem-Solution Fit
- •Auto-generated Value Proposition Canvas derived from Problem, Pitch, and Evaluation.
- •Enables rapid screening, side-by-side comparison, and prioritization of submissions.
- •Designed explicitly as a decision support artifact, not a marketing document.
Includes:
- –Customer Profile (jobs, pains, gains)
- –Value Map (solution, pain relievers, gain creators)
- –Fit Assessment (alignment score, strengths, gaps)
6. Deepen Planning and Execution
- •Translation module to define MVPs, outcomes, and readiness.
- •Execution module to identify risks, milestones, and resource needs.
- •Stakeholders can gate access to these features based on evaluation results.
- •Outputs flow back into the VPC and project view for holistic assessment.
7. Gather and Act on Institutional Intelligence
- •Organization-level management of visibility rules, challenges, and submissions.
- •Administrative dashboards and activity summaries.
- •Built-in controls for ethical AI use, visibility, and data handling.
Develop, Test, and Strengthen Your Concept
Start with an idea, funding opportunity, or problem you want to address. PITCH helps you clarify the concept, see it through stakeholder and evaluator perspectives, identify gaps, and strengthen it through repeated development before substantial time and resources are committed.
These capabilities are available through the PITCH Researcher membership.
1. Start Where You Are
- •Share raw ideas in a searchable Pitchfolio—no polish required. Post your idea as you are, without drafting a formal pitch or uploading a CV, and make it visible across the network for collaborators and supporters to find you.
- •Respond to stakeholder-posted challenges and receive structured feedback.
- •Team-building tools with AI-assisted skill matching.
2. Guided Pitch Distillation
- •AI-coached workflow for articulating your problem, approach, impact, and unique value proposition.
- •Chat-based ideation that structures thinking without imposing rigid templates.
- •NSF-oriented output mode for CAREER and other federal proposal framing.
3. Rubric-Based Feedback & Evaluation
- •Receive structured feedback from customizable AI personas (e.g., critical reviewer, domain expert).
- •Evaluate proposal readiness against weighted rubric criteria to identify strengths and gaps before submission.
- •Iterative refinement: revise your pitch and re-evaluate until it meets your standards.
4. Problem Alignment & KPP Planning
- •Align your pitch to stakeholder-defined problems and performance parameters.
- •Key Performance Parameter (KPP) tools to define measurable success criteria.
- •State-of-the-Art (SOTA) assist to benchmark your approach against existing research.
5. Auto-Generated Project Artifacts
- •Value Proposition Canvas generated from your pitch and problem context.
- •Project assembly that combines pitch, evaluation, and supporting evidence.
- •Export-ready views for sharing with collaborators or submitting to stakeholders.
Build and Navigate as an Inventor
Start with an invention, technology, or emerging solution and develop the pathway around it. PITCH helps you clarify the problem and value proposition, test fit through stakeholder perspectives, plan translation and execution, and build toward commercialization without requiring a polished pitch at the outset.
These capabilities are available through the PITCH Inventor membership.
1. Visibility & Matchmaking
- •Publish pitches and project plans to the Pitchfolio for discovery by stakeholders and potential collaborators.
- •Respond to posted challenges and receive structured evaluation feedback.
- •Virtual business card to control what information is shared with interested parties.
2. From Idea to Pitch
- •Free-form, chat-based ideation that captures the essence of your invention.
- •Guided structuring into problem, approach, impact, and unique value—without requiring grant-writing experience.
- •AI coaching adapted to your domain and experience level.
3. Translation & MVP Planning
- •Translate your idea into minimum viable products (MVPs) with defined outcomes.
- •Technology and Manufacturing Readiness Level (TRL/MRL) assessments.
- •AI-generated translation plans that identify next steps toward commercialization.
4. Execution Roadmapping
- •Milestone planning with risk identification and mitigation strategies.
- •Resource needs analysis and timeline development.
- •Outputs integrated into the Value Proposition Canvas for stakeholder review.
5. Value Proposition Canvas
- •Automatically generated from your pitch, problem context, and evaluation.
- •A professional artifact for investor meetings, partnership discussions, and internal reviews.
- •Includes fit assessment, customer profile, and value map sections.