PITCH: Prototype your concept
You prototype your technology. Why not prototype your concept?
A prototype isn't the finished answer. It's a way to ask a question, test an assumption, and learn before you've over-invested.
Follow the guided journey to learn the approach, or jump directly to the tools you need. Start anywhere and return as your concept evolves. Looking for step-by-step instructions? View the Quick Start Guides.
WHY
Why prototype a concept?
A concept prototype is a lightweight way to test an idea before committing substantial time and resources. It exposes assumptions, brings different perspectives into the development process, and helps you refine what matters most. In PITCH, your pitch becomes that prototype—a structured, testable representation of your concept that evolves through feedback, discovery, and evidence.
What's Your Challenge?
Whether you're advancing an idea or looking for a solution, find your challenge and explore how PITCH can help.
Meet Essie
Essie — The Early-Stage Investigator
“My science is strong. I'm confident proposal reviewers will eventually see what I see.”
Meet Essie. She's a talented early-stage investigator with a compelling research idea. She's confident in her science, understands the importance of the problem, and believes her approach is innovative. She's written scientific papers before. How different could a research proposal be?
The problem
Essie has submitted proposals she believed were competitive, only to receive disappointing reviews. She addresses the reviewers' criticisms, but the next submission seems to reveal entirely new weaknesses. The process feels like a black box.
She's confident in her science and the importance of her research. But she's so close to her own idea that she struggles to see it through someone else's eyes. Reviewers must be persuaded not only that her work is technically sound, but that it's distinctive, compelling, and worth funding now—especially when competing proposals also address important problems.
The PITCH promise
PITCH helps Essie step outside her own perspective and examine her research concept through the eyes of proposal reviewers—and begin to recognize how proposal writing differs from writing scientific papers.
Through guided concept prototyping, she can test assumptions, identify overlooked weaknesses, and reframe her research as a compelling case for investment. Why is the problem important? What makes her approach different? Why should this work be funded now, ahead of other worthy proposals?
Rather than simply improving her scientific writing, Essie can develop a coherent, persuasive story that reviewers understand, remember, and are willing to advocate for.
Why PITCH?
What if you could read a reviewer's mind? You can't, of course, but you can learn to see your research through their eyes.
You can ask a general-purpose AI to critique your proposal. But how do you know which questions to ask, whether its assessment is consistent, or what evidence it actually found? PITCH provides a guided development process and a defined evaluation framework, helping you examine your concept from both your own perspective and that of a potential reviewer. Its evidence-grounded assessments show what supports the evaluation—and where your intended argument may not be coming through.
Work independently, revise at your own pace, and return to your developing concept and assessments as you improve your case. Bring a stronger proposal—and better questions—to your mentor, so your conversations can focus on the deeper issues where human experience and judgment matter most.
Edison — The Inventor
“I've discovered something new! Now what?”
Meet Edison. He's a scientist and inventor who's made a surprising discovery. He knows he's onto something important. He probably needs to protect the intellectual property, perhaps file a patent. But what comes after that?
The problem
Edison understands what makes his discovery scientifically novel, but he hasn't yet translated that novelty into a compelling commercial opportunity. Scientific significance alone doesn't establish that someone needs his invention—or would pay to use it.
What customer problem could it solve? How does it compare with existing alternatives? What performance would make it worth adopting or investing in? Edison needs to look beyond the scientific discovery to determine what would make his invention commercially valuable before deciding where to focus further development.
The PITCH promise
PITCH helps Edison examine his discovery through the lens of commercial value rather than scientific novelty alone.
Through guided concept prototyping, he can explore customer pain points, compare his invention with existing alternatives, and define the performance improvements that would make it worth adopting. He can test different ways of framing the opportunity and identify what evidence would make a compelling case to potential customers or investors.
The result is a clearer basis for deciding which technical questions to pursue, what needs further validation, and where to focus development resources.
### Why PITCH? A general-purpose AI can suggest applications for your invention, identify potential markets, or help develop a commercialization plan. But how do you connect those possibilities to the technical work needed to make your invention valuable? PITCH brings the pieces together in a structured **Problem–Solution Alignment Canvas**. It connects customer needs, existing alternatives, technical performance targets, and proposed development activities within a persistent Project. Rather than evaluating each element separately, you can examine how well they fit together—and where important gaps or inconsistencies remain. As you refine performance targets, explore alternative applications, or reconsider development priorities, PITCH helps you evaluate the implications for the overall Project. The result is a more disciplined basis for deciding what to develop next, what evidence is missing, and where to invest your limited resources.
Edison's path: Get Started
Develop an initial concept prototype and explore the problems, customers, and applications that could give your invention value.
#### Prerequisite: Establish Your Problem and Solution This workflow requires a concept prototype as an entry point and a defined Problem to evaluate problem–solution alignment. The [DISTILL](/home#distill) and [DESIGN](/home#design) tabs explain how to complete these prerequisites, or you can explore Essie's workflow for additional guidance. For a faster approach, try the [**Problem-Finding and Solution Alignment demo**](/demos#problem-finding-and-solution-alignment). This guided workflow helps you develop your concept prototype (including the option to upload bulk text), explore potential Problem framings, and refine their alignment in a single integrated conversation. The demo creates an initial **Problem** and **Pitch**, combines them into a **Project**, and preserves their relationships for future refinement. It also completes the initial assembly described under **Assemble and Evaluate Your Project** in [DEEPEN](/home#deepen). #### Core Pathway **[DEEPEN](/home#deepen):** Review the introduction and the **Problem–Solution Alignment Canvas** illustrated in the header. This framework connects your invention to customer needs, technical performance expectations, and potential applications. It provides a foundation for exploring how a scientific discovery might become a valuable solution. **[DESIGN](/home#design):** Explore how PITCH defines Problems and evaluates Alignment and Quality. Consider why identifying the right problem is as important as developing the solution. #### Additional Resources **[Partnered Innovation](/design#partnered-innovation):** Explore why discovering a meaningful customer problem can be as important as the technical invention itself. **[DEEPEN](/home#deepen):** Preview the translation and execution tools available for developing your initial Project into a more complete concept prototype.
Edison's path: Develop & Refine
Refine your invention's problem–solution alignment, establish meaningful performance targets, and explore the development activities needed to deliver customer value.
**[DEEPEN](/home#deepen):** Return to your Project and explore the tools available to develop it beyond the initial Problem and Pitch. The **Execute, Translate, MVP, and Risk** modules offer different perspectives on advancing your invention, including development milestones, commercialization pathways, minimum viable performance, and potential risks. Select the modules most relevant to your current uncertainties. You do not need to complete every module to make meaningful progress. **[DESIGN](/home#design):** Revisit your [Problem](/problem) to clarify customer pain points, identify existing alternatives, and establish **Technical Performance Targets**. Consider what your invention must accomplish to offer a meaningful improvement over the state of the art. Distinguish between what makes your invention scientifically novel and what would make it valuable enough for a customer to adopt. **[DISTILL](/home#distill):** Return to your concept prototype on [Pitch](/pitch) if your findings suggest that the proposed solution or its intended application needs refinement. Reevaluate the revised concept to examine whether it makes a stronger case for customer value and problem–solution alignment. The goal is to emerge with a clearer understanding of **what performance matters, what remains uncertain, and which development activities deserve priority**—not simply to complete more Project modules.
Edison's path: Test & Optimize
Evaluate your integrated development project to identify gaps in problem–solution alignment, assess readiness, and prioritize the next steps toward implementation.
**[DEEPEN](/home#deepen):** Return to **Assemble and Evaluate Your Project** and open your [Project](/project). Use the **Problem–Solution Alignment Canvas** to examine how your invention, customer needs, technical performance targets, and development activities fit together. Run a Project evaluation to identify gaps, inconsistencies, and unresolved risks. Consider whether your proposed development activities will deliver the performance improvements needed to create meaningful customer value. **[DESIGN](/home#design):** Experiment with alternative Problem framings or Technical Performance Targets where important uncertainties remain. For example, consider whether your invention might offer greater value in a different application or against a different performance benchmark. Return to your Project and reevaluate how these changes affect problem–solution alignment. **[DEEPEN](/home#deepen):** Use the evaluation results to prioritize your next development steps. Determine whether you need stronger evidence of customer demand, additional technical validation, revised performance targets, or a different development strategy. Focus on resolving the uncertainties that matter most to your invention's potential value and readiness for implementation, rather than completing every available module.
D.K. — The Door Knocker
“I know my idea has potential. Why aren't others seeing it—and where do I go from here?”
Meet D.K. She's an innovator with a technology or idea she believes has real potential. She's invested time developing her concept, perhaps built a prototype, explored potential applications, or approached customers, advisors, and funding organizations. But she isn't gaining the traction she expected. Some people seem interested but don't follow through. Others ask questions she hadn't anticipated or suggest opportunities that don't quite fit. D.K. wants to understand what's missing, where her innovation could create the greatest value, and how to engage the people and organizations that could help her move forward.
The problem
D.K. believes her innovation has real potential, but she's struggling to gain traction. She can explain its technical capabilities in detail, yet customers, investors, and funding organizations aren't responding as she expected.
The problem may not be her technology—or even how she explains it. She may be approaching the wrong audience, emphasizing capabilities rather than customer needs, or overlooking a more valuable application. Until she understands the problems and priorities of those she's trying to reach, she risks pushing a solution that doesn't align with their needs or mission.
The PITCH promise
PITCH introduces D.K. to partnered innovation: developing an opportunity by examining the problems, priorities, and perspectives of those who might benefit from her technology.
Through guided concept prototyping, she can step into a customer's shoes, identify meaningful pain points, and test whether her proposed solution addresses them. She can explore alternative applications, assess alignment with organizational missions or funding priorities, and identify evidence that would strengthen her case.
Rather than simply improving her pitch, D.K. can rethink the opportunity itself—and approach potential customers, partners, or funders with a concept grounded in problems they actually want solved.
### Why PITCH? A general-purpose AI can help you brainstorm applications for your technology and improve how you describe them. But how do you compare those opportunities systematically rather than relying on a series of AI conversations? PITCH lets you examine the same innovation against different problems, customer needs, or funding missions using defined evaluation criteria. It distinguishes **Alignment**—how well your solution addresses a particular problem—from **Quality**—how clearly and credibly you've developed the concept. Evidence-grounded assessments help you understand what's supporting each evaluation and where important gaps remain. Instead of starting over with each new application or audience, you can build on structured, persistent concepts and evaluations. The result isn't a prediction of which opportunity will succeed, but a more disciplined way to compare possibilities and decide what to investigate next.
D.K.'s path: Get Started
Explore how PITCH can help you clarify your idea, identify gaps, and prepare for a productive conversation with an entrepreneurial advisor or support organization.
#### Core Pathway **[Partnered Innovation](/design#partnered-innovation):** Explore the principles of partnered innovation: developing opportunities by understanding the problems, priorities, and perspectives of those you hope to reach. The goal is not simply to communicate your solution more effectively, but to discover where it could create meaningful value. **[Why PITCH?](/design#why-pitch):** Explore why concept prototyping and early feedback can help you identify overlooked assumptions, test alternative applications, and strengthen an opportunity before committing additional resources. **[DISTILL](/home#distill):** Review the introduction to concept prototyping to understand how PITCH helps you examine an innovation through different stakeholder perspectives and refine its problem–solution alignment. #### Example Use Cases Start with the recommended [Demos](/demos) that let you work backward from a solution to discover where it might create value: **Problem-Finding and Solution Alignment:** Start with your existing innovation, explore alternative Problems and customer pain points through guided dialogue, and evaluate how well your solution aligns with each. **SBIR/STTR Alignment Intake:** Explore how your innovation aligns with different funding missions and program priorities. Consider how changing the Problem or intended application influences the Alignment score. These exercises are particularly relevant if you have a solution but are uncertain which problem, customer, or opportunity offers the strongest fit. #### Additional Resources **[Evaluation Framework](/evaluation-framework):** Understand how PITCH evaluates Alignment and Quality, how scores are derived, and how to interpret feedback when comparing alternative Problems or stakeholder expectations. **[DESIGN](/home#design):** When you're ready to develop your own workflow, explore **Quick Start** and **Or Design Your Own Challenge Environment** to learn how to select or configure Problems, Challenges, and evaluation criteria. **[DEEPEN](/home#deepen):** Explore the **Problem–Solution Alignment Canvas** to understand how customer needs, technical capabilities, performance expectations, and intended outcomes fit together.
D.K.'s path: Develop & Refine
Strengthen your innovation concept by examining the opportunity through your customers' eyes, exploring their needs and pain points, and identifying assumptions that need further investigation.
**[DESIGN](/home#design):** Return to the Problems and potential applications you explored in Level 1. Select a promising direction, or define your own Problem around a specific customer need, organizational mission, or opportunity. Consider the problem from the perspective of those you hope to reach. What are they trying to accomplish? What alternatives do they currently use? What would make your innovation worth adopting or supporting? **[DISTILL](/home#distill):** Return to your concept prototype on [Pitch](/pitch) and refine it around the Problem you've selected. Focus on explaining the customer's need, how your innovation addresses it, and why your approach offers meaningful value. Evaluate your revised concept using different **Quality Rubrics** and **Reviewer Personas**. Consider how customers, technical experts, or potential partners might assess the same opportunity differently. Distinguish weaknesses in how you've explained your concept from assumptions that require additional evidence, customer discovery, or technical validation. **[DEEPEN](/home#deepen):** Explore the **Problem–Solution Alignment Canvas** to examine how well your proposed solution addresses the needs you've identified. Consider what performance improvements, supporting evidence, or development activities would strengthen its value proposition. You don't need to complete every module. Focus on the uncertainties that matter most. Use your findings to identify **specific questions to investigate with customers, advisors, or potential partners**, rather than simply preparing a more polished pitch.
D.K.'s path: Test & Optimize
Evaluate your concept against the expectations of a specific customer, partner, funding opportunity, or development program, and identify the evidence and expert guidance needed to move forward.
**[DESIGN](/home#design):** Identify a specific opportunity or stakeholder you want to approach. This might be a prospective customer, an SBDC advisor, a development partner, an accelerator, or a funding program. Select or configure a Challenge that reflects the relevant needs, mission priorities, and evaluation criteria. Consider what would make your innovation compelling from that stakeholder's perspective. **[DISTILL](/home#distill):** Return to your concept prototype on [Pitch](/pitch) and evaluate it against the selected opportunity. Examine both **Alignment** and **Quality** feedback to distinguish whether your concept addresses the right problem and whether you've made a convincing case for your solution. Experiment with alternative Problem framings or Reviewer Personas where appropriate. Does a different application, audience, or emphasis improve alignment? Which weaknesses persist regardless of perspective? **[DEEPEN](/home#deepen):** Use the evaluation findings to identify the most important uncertainties that remain. These might involve customer demand, technical feasibility, competitive alternatives, development risks, or evidence needed to support your claims. Prioritize the questions that require outside expertise or validation rather than attempting to resolve everything within PITCH. #### Preparing for the Next Conversation Bring your refined concept, key evaluation findings, and a short set of focused questions to your next conversation with a customer, advisor, or potential partner. **The goal is not to arrive with a perfect pitch. It's to arrive with a clearer understanding of the opportunity, what you still need to learn, and how that person might help you move forward.**
Victoria — The Strategic Research Team Builder
“We have brilliant people and great ideas. How do I bring the right ones together to build something bigger?”
Meet Victoria. She's leading the development of an ambitious interdisciplinary research initiative. The opportunity is compelling, but realizing it requires expertise spanning multiple disciplines, organizations, and perspectives. She knows some of the people and capabilities available, but suspects there are others she hasn't discovered. Her challenge is to identify the right contributors, uncover complementary strengths, and assemble a team capable of pursuing something none could accomplish independently.
The problem
Victoria is developing an ambitious interdisciplinary research initiative, but identifying the right contributors requires substantial effort. Existing faculty directories, research databases, and capability summaries are often organized by person or discipline rather than problem or opportunity. Despite extensive institutional investments in documenting expertise, she finds herself reconstructing the landscape for each new initiative.
She may need expertise in education, team science, or an unexpected technical field, but doesn't know which individuals have complementary capabilities—or an interest in contributing. Even when she identifies promising researchers, their ideas don't automatically form a coherent initiative. Victoria needs to discover relevant and sometimes unexpected contributors, then bring their capabilities and perspectives together around a compelling research direction.
The PITCH promise
PITCH helps Victoria discover and assemble the capabilities needed to pursue an ambitious interdisciplinary research opportunity.
By creating a Challenge around the problem she wants to address, she can invite researchers and potential partners to contribute their expertise, interests, and emerging ideas. This problem-centered approach can reveal unexpected contributors and complementary capabilities that conventional faculty directories overlook.
As a team takes shape, concept prototyping helps participants examine assumptions, explore how their contributions fit together, and converge on a coherent research direction. Victoria can move from discovering possibilities to developing a competitive interdisciplinary initiative.
### Why PITCH? PITCH uses AI as an interactive interface to a structured database—not simply to generate responses. Instead of distributing static questionnaires or collecting disconnected AI conversations, Victoria can design a shared solicitation with a defined problem, questions, and evaluation rubric. Researchers receive individualized guidance to articulate their expertise in terms that cross disciplinary boundaries. Their responses are organized, evaluated against common criteria, and supported by evidence-based assessments. The resulting records persist within a shared, permission-controlled system. For Victoria, this means less time translating technical jargon and consolidating fragmented responses, and more time understanding complementary capabilities and assembling interdisciplinary teams.
Victoria's path: Get Started
Explore how PITCH can help discover research ideas, identify complementary capabilities, and develop a coherent interdisciplinary initiative.
#### Core Pathway **[DESIGN](/home#design):** Review **Or Design Your Own Challenge Environment** to understand how PITCH uses problem-centered Challenges to solicit research ideas, expertise, and emerging capabilities. Consider how broad versus narrowly defined Problems might attract different contributions. **[DISCOVER](/home#discover):** Focus on **Discovery Works Both Ways** and **Discover Connections and Emerging Capability** to understand how Pitchfolio, virtual business cards, and matchmaking can reveal complementary expertise, research interests, and potential collaborators beyond conventional faculty directories. **[DIFFERENTIATE](/home#differentiate):** Review how PITCH evaluates and organizes Challenge submissions. Consider how Alignment and Quality evaluations can help identify promising contributions and complementary research directions—not simply rank individual submissions. #### Example Use Cases Explore the recommended [Demos](/demos), particularly: - **Open Innovation Discovery Challenge:** Illustrates how a broadly framed research opportunity can solicit emerging ideas and capabilities from potential collaborators. - **Technical Design Challenge:** Illustrates how more specific technical requirements can focus contributions toward a shared objective. Consider how these two approaches could help you explore alternative research directions before committing to a particular team or proposal configuration.
Victoria's path: Develop & Refine
Solicit research ideas and capabilities, identify complementary expertise and potential collaborators, and begin assembling the building blocks of an interdisciplinary initiative.
**[DESIGN](/home#design):** Using the **Open Innovation Discovery Challenge** as a model, configure your own Challenge around a broad research theme or specific funding opportunity. Refer to **Or Design Your Own Challenge Environment** for guidance. Establish a collaborative group for your initiative and configure the Challenge to be shared within that group. Invite researchers and potential partners to contribute emerging ideas, research thrusts, and relevant capabilities. Configure the Challenge to encourage participants to publish their contributions within the group, recognizing that individual users retain final control over what they share. At this stage, emphasize collecting possibilities and identifying complementary strengths rather than prematurely selecting a final direction. **[DISCOVER](/home#discover):** Use PITCH's matchmaking capabilities to identify additional expertise and potential collaborators. Encourage participants to establish virtual business cards describing their research interests, capabilities, and relevant facilities. Explore published concepts in [Pitchfolio](/pitchfolio) to identify complementary interests and begin building a virtual Rolodex of potential collaborators. **[DIFFERENTIATE](/home#differentiate):** Review submissions to your Challenge to identify promising ideas, complementary contributions, and gaps in the capabilities needed to pursue the opportunity. Identify alternative research directions that warrant further exploration, without committing prematurely to a particular configuration. Preserve promising ideas and contacts, including those that may not fit the immediate initiative but could contribute to future opportunities.
Victoria's path: Test & Optimize
Prototype and compare alternative research directions to identify a coherent initiative and appropriate team configuration before making substantial commitments.
**[DESIGN](/home#design):** Design or refine a Problem and Challenge that reflect the full scope of a larger interdisciplinary initiative. Recognize that individual submissions may represent only part of the envisioned effort; the goal is to identify complementary contributions and explore how they fit together. Consider a comprehensive Quality Rubric encompassing technical research, education, workforce development, and outreach. Individual submissions need not address every criterion; their value may emerge through integration with other contributions. **[DIFFERENTIATE](/home#differentiate):** Examine individual submissions and evaluations, considering how different strengths might combine into a more compelling initiative. For example, an education-focused contribution may be technically limited on its own but strengthen an integrated research and workforce development effort. Identify complementary research thrusts, supporting activities, and capability gaps. **[DISTILL](/home#distill):** **Develop a concept prototype of the integrated initiative**, rather than its individual components. Use [Pitch](/pitch) to articulate the overarching problem, shared objectives, and how the contributions fit together. Evaluate the integrated concept, then iterate with alternative configurations and potential collaborators, as appropriate, to refine its scope, coherence, and focus. **[DISCOVER](/home#discover):** Preserve promising ideas, capabilities, and contacts that do not fit the selected direction. Maintain these connections through Pitchfolio and virtual business cards for future initiatives, center development, or other collaborative opportunities.
Menos — The Research Development Mentor
“I want to help more researchers strengthen their ideas, but I'm spending too much time on the basics. How do I get them ready for deeper coaching?”
Meet Menos. He develops, coordinates, or delivers research mentoring and faculty-development programs. Whether organizing workshops, advising individual researchers, or connecting investigators with experienced mentors, he knows how much difference good coaching makes—and how difficult it is to provide enough individualized support across disciplines.
The problem
Menos sees the same challenges repeatedly. Researchers and innovators develop technically sound proposals, sometimes even beautifully written ones, that fail to make a compelling case for investment. The problem may lie in the significance of the work, the central argument, differentiation, or proposed impact—not necessarily the underlying science. Addressing these weaknesses requires individualized guidance. General proposal-development advisors can help with broadly applicable principles, but may lack the technical expertise to challenge discipline-specific assumptions or assess differentiation. Specialized reviewers can provide that perspective, but their time is scarce and expensive. Workshops can introduce proposal-development principles, yet researchers still need help applying them to their own ideas. Menos wants to bridge this gap without overwhelming development staff or consuming scarce expert-review resources.
The PITCH promise
PITCH helps Menos provide individualized proposal-development guidance at scale, bridging the gap between generalized workshops and specialized expert review. Through guided concept prototyping and adaptive coaching, researchers and innovators can strengthen their central arguments, examine differentiation and impact, and identify gaps in proposal readiness before engaging experienced mentors or technical reviewers. Customizable Reviewer Personas add discipline-specific perspectives to this process. By uploading a relevant technical paper, Menos or the researcher can configure an AI reviewer informed by that field—providing a more technically relevant first-pass critique without requiring a specialist for every interaction. Menos can organize developmental Challenges for workshops, research cohorts, or recurring proposal programs, combining broadly applicable developmental guidance with technical perspectives tailored to individual projects. Researchers arrive better prepared for substantive mentoring, allowing scarce expert time to focus on questions that genuinely require specialized judgment.
### Why PITCH? PITCH uses AI as an interactive interface to a structured database, transforming individual coaching conversations into persistent research concepts, assessments, and developmental records. Rather than designing sophisticated prompts or distributing standalone GPT coaching agents, Menos can provide researchers with a shared, configurable development framework. Researchers receive individualized guidance to clarify their ideas, strengthen their arguments, and evaluate readiness against defined criteria—with supporting evidence available for review. The resulting concepts and assessments remain accessible for continued development and authorized sharing. Menos can extend his mentoring reach while retaining a structured basis for follow-up conversations, targeted feedback, and consistent research-development support across multiple researchers.
Menos's path: Get Started
Explore how PITCH can better prepare researchers for substantive mentoring interactions. Learn how researchers can independently refine and focus preliminary concepts, address identified weaknesses through iteration, and simulate reviews from multiple perspectives.
#### Core Pathway **[DISTILL](/home#distill):** This tab, along with [Resources](/resources), provides the majority of the methodology that will be essential for you to understand the PITCH P.I. approach. Review **Test Your Prototype** to understand how the platform leads researchers to evaluate and refine their emerging concepts, with a focus on considering different evaluator perspectives. Note that users may select different evaluation criteria to simulate different review perspectives. **[DESIGN](/home#design):** This tab provides critical information on how the system is designed as an interactive and adaptive coaching tool. Problem criteria, customer pain points, outcomes, and evaluation foci are all fed into the interactive coach to focus the user toward a predefined target. Review **Adaptive Coaching and Context Injection** to better understand this methodology. #### Additional Capabilities **[DIFFERENTIATE](/home#differentiate):** Review how PITCH evaluates and organizes submissions within a Challenge, using Alignment, Quality, and evidence-grounded assessments to support consistent comparison and informed decisions. Explore the Scorecard and Value Proposition Canvas examples to see how individual evaluation findings make mission alignment and supporting evidence visible. Consider how a database of longitudinal developmental scores could help you identify targeted interventions across your mentoring cohorts. **[DISCOVER](/home#discover):** Consider how DISCOVER can help identify emerging research interests, capabilities, and potential collaborators. As an example, for workshops, mixers, or mentoring cohorts, [Pitchfolio](/pitchfolio) could allow researchers to identify complementary interests in advance and arrive prepared for more meaningful conversations. **[DEEPEN](/home#deepen):** Review this tab if you are working with mentees who need help creating more advanced proposal elements, such as execution plans, risk-reward matrices, or MVPs. #### Example Use Cases Encourage researchers to bring a developed Pitch, evaluation feedback, and a few unresolved questions to their next mentoring session. Consider recommending the chat on [Pitch](/pitch) before researchers speak with a program manager. Practicing how they explain and defend their concept may help them identify questions worth resolving before that conversation. Encourage mentees to experiment with alternative Reviewer Personas and Quality Rubrics to expose different assumptions and perspectives. These features are available in dropdowns on [Pitch](/pitch).
Menos's path: Develop & Refine
Develop reusable coaching and evaluation environments that help researchers strengthen their concepts.
**[DEMOS](/demos):** Consider the breadth of preconfigured [Challenge demos](/demos) from your mentees' perspective, and consider whether these meet your needs. Next, explore the various researcher archetypes at the top of this page, including Essie, D.K., Edison, and Victoria. If you see overlap, these provide the most direct shareable resources. You may also customize your own experience as described below. Revisit [DESIGN](/home#design) to create your own Organizational library of problem elements (Problem Statements, Quality Rubrics, and Reviewer Personas). Review **Engage across an Organization** and **Engage a Collaborative Group** to understand visibility and sharing across your organization versus specific groups (e.g., a proposal preparation workshop or research mentoring cohort). Customize Reviewer Personas to provide discipline-specific perspectives alongside general proposal-development guidance. Upload a relevant technical paper to inform a reviewer's expertise, allowing researchers to receive a more technically focused first-pass critique before engaging specialized experts. For programs spanning multiple disciplines, encourage participants to customize their own Reviewer Personas or provide tailored personas through your organizational library. These reusable elements can be selected individually from dropdown menus on the pages where they're needed or, alternatively, assembled into a configured Challenge to provide a common developmental framework. Either approach allows researchers to independently refine and evaluate their concepts before mentoring sessions, helping you identify individual needs, recognize common weaknesses across a cohort, and focus your mentoring time where it adds the greatest value.
Menos's path: Test & Optimize
Use evaluation results and emerging concept-development patterns to identify common weaknesses, target mentoring interventions, and improve developmental outcomes.
**[DESIGN](/home#design) — Adapt a Shared Challenge Across Disciplines** Enable **Allow responder technical context augmentation** in your Problem configuration. This lets you use a single Challenge across departments or technical disciplines, rather than creating separate Challenges for each research area. Respondents are prompted to identify and articulate the technical challenges, knowledge gaps, and priorities relevant to their own research program before beginning Adaptive Coaching. This exercise encourages researchers to investigate and distill their disciplinary context while giving PITCH more specific information for subsequent coaching. **[DIFFERENTIATE](/home#differentiate):** Examine evaluation results across researchers participating in a common Challenge. Look for recurring weaknesses in problem significance, differentiation, or readiness. Consider whether these patterns suggest a need for individual mentoring, a targeted workshop, or a change in the developmental resources provided to the cohort. **Additional Resources:** Review the Piper archetype above to consider how this material could support future proposal cycles, new collaborations, and researchers whose promising ideas did not fit their original funding opportunity.
Scout — The Early-Stage Opportunity Advisor
“How do I find the next big opportunity without wasting my time—or overlooking promising innovators who struggle to make their case?”
Meet Scout. She works with early-stage entrepreneurs and investment opportunities, perhaps as a venture capital investor, angel network advisor, or accelerator leader. She's constantly looking for promising founders and emerging ventures, but her time and mentoring resources are limited. She wants to identify opportunities early, understand their potential, and determine which ones deserve closer attention—even when the founders struggle to communicate the value of their technology or their ability to execute.
The problem
Scout actively seeks promising early-stage ventures, but founders vary considerably in their ability to communicate the market need for their technology and demonstrate how they will execute. Some have compelling technical capabilities but struggle to explain the customer problem, their proposed approach, or the team's ability to deliver meaningful results. Traditional pitch events and intake forms often reveal how effectively founders present their opportunities, rather than the underlying potential of the technology and the team's ability to execute. Evaluation can also be influenced by differences in reviewer expectations, personal networks, and subjective judgments. Scout needs an efficient, defensible way to identify promising ventures without overlooking opportunities simply because their founders struggle to communicate their value. Yet examining every opportunity in depth requires scarce expert time.
The PITCH promise
PITCH helps Scout recognize promising opportunities that conventional screening might overlook, while making evaluation more transparent, consistent, and defensible. She can configure a Challenge around her investment priorities and communicate evaluation criteria before founders submit their concepts. Through guided concept prototyping and adaptive coaching, founders can clarify the customer problem, explain their proposed approach, and examine the evidence supporting their ability to execute. Rather than guessing what evaluators want, they can develop the substance of their responses around clearly defined expectations. Structured evaluations provide a consistent baseline for comparing opportunities, examining reviewer judgments, and making more defensible decisions. Scout can distinguish weaknesses in how an opportunity is communicated from substantive gaps in market understanding, execution capability, or commercial potential. The result is a more transparent, consistent, and defensible evaluation process that uses scarce expert time effectively, helps promising opportunities receive consideration on their merits, and provides a clearer basis for deciding which ventures deserve further attention.
### Why PITCH? A general-purpose AI can evaluate startup pitches against an investment rubric. But what if the most promising founder hasn't yet learned how to explain the opportunity? PITCH connects founder development directly to venture screening. Scout defines the investment priorities and evaluation criteria, then uses Adaptive Coaching to help founders develop more informative submissions before they're assessed. Rather than evaluating whatever happens to arrive in the inbox, she can improve the quality of information entering her opportunity pipeline. PITCH uses AI as an interactive interface to a structured database, not simply to generate independent assessments. Founder responses, supporting evidence, and criterion-level evaluations are organized within a shared Challenge, allowing Scout to compare opportunities against a common framework and identify where further diligence or mentoring could add value. The advantage isn't just faster screening. It's a better-informed starting point for deciding which opportunities deserve a closer look.
Scout's path: Get Started
Explore how PITCH combines guided founder development, structured venture intake, and comparative evaluation to identify promising opportunities and support investment-readiness decisions.
#### Core Pathway **[DESIGN](/home#design):** Review **Or Design Your Own Challenge Environment** to understand how Problems, Quality Rubrics, and Reviewer Personas establish a structured venture intake and evaluation process. Review **Adaptive Coaching and Context Injection** to see how a Challenge can guide founders toward investment priorities while helping them develop their concepts before review. **[DIFFERENTIATE](/home#differentiate):** Explore how PITCH organizes and compares Challenge submissions through Alignment, Quality, and readiness assessments. Review the Scorecard and Signal examples on [Demos](/demos) to see how results can support decisions about further diligence, mentoring, or development. #### Additional Capabilities **[DISCOVER](/home#discover):** Review **Discovery Works Both Ways** to understand how published concepts can connect with potential advisors, investors, and partners. #### Example Use Cases Explore the recommended **Investment Readiness Screening** and **Angel Network Venture Prioritization** demos to see how PITCH supports founder development and comparative venture screening. Consider how these two approaches might complement one another in your own investment or mentoring pipeline.
Scout's path: Develop & Refine
Build and deploy a venture intake Challenge that communicates your investment priorities, establishes transparent evaluation criteria, and provides a consistent, defensible baseline for identifying promising opportunities.
**[DESIGN](/home#design) — Build your Challenge** Create a Challenge around the investment opportunities you want to attract. Start by defining the Problem with the broad market opportunity that your organization is pursuing. Select or customize a Quality Rubric and Reviewer Persona to establish criteria for assessing market need, differentiation, and the team's ability to execute. **[DIFFERENTIATE](/home#differentiate) — Refine your evaluation criteria** To evaluate contrasting sample ventures, ensure you understand how the quality matrix rubric will determine scores and error bars to ensure you have the sensitivity you need for meaningful differentiation. Refine the criteria as needed. **[DESIGN](/home#design) — Deploy your Challenge** Configure an organizational or collaborative-group environment to share your Challenge and evaluation elements with colleagues, mentors, or investment committee members. Publish your Challenge and share the link to invite submissions. Return to Challenge-level, described on [DIFFERENTIATE](/home#differentiate), to compare incoming ventures against your criteria and identify opportunities for diligence, further development, or other disposition. **[DISCOVER](/home#discover) — Expand your opportunity network** Explore Pitchfolio and configure Alerts to surface emerging ventures, technologies, or capabilities relevant to your investment priorities.
Scout's path: Test & Optimize
Improve the quality of information entering your opportunity funnel through Adaptive Coaching, helping promising innovators communicate their market potential and ability to execute before formal evaluation.
**[DESIGN](/home#design) — Activate Adaptive Coaching** Return to your Challenge and enable Adaptive Coaching. Select "Require responder to define customer" to have PITCH question respondents about who their customers are and what pain points they experience, without supplying the answers. Include customer identification and pain-point understanding in your Quality Rubric so these responses receive an initial evaluation alongside your other investment criteria. Use Test the Problem Design to experience the respondent-facing coaching interaction. **[DIFFERENTIATE](/home#differentiate) — Recognize promising opportunities** Use Challenge-level reports to review submissions informed by Adaptive Coaching. Explore how the additional context helps distinguish substantive weaknesses from opportunities that were previously difficult to assess. **[DESIGN](/home#design) — Refine your intake process** Use recurring gaps identified through evaluation to refine your Problem framing and Adaptive Coaching guidance for future respondents. **The goal is not simply to process more submissions. It is to uncover promising opportunities that conventional screening might miss—by helping founders articulate their customer needs and ability to execute, evaluating those responses against transparent criteria, and enabling Scout to identify and advance stronger opportunities without proportionally increasing demands on scarce expert time.**
Marshall — The Challenge Owner
“There must be a better way to find the technologies we actually need.”
Meet Marshall. He's responsible for identifying technologies that could address important mission needs. He knows the problems his organization faces, but he can't possibly be an expert in every technology that might solve them.
The problem
Marshall is constantly approached by innovators who believe their technologies could address his organization's mission needs. But impressive technical capabilities don't necessarily translate into relevant solutions. What problem does the technology solve? How well does it meet his requirements? He worries about overlooking valuable technologies, particularly those emerging from unfamiliar disciplines.
He relies on subject-matter experts to evaluate promising opportunities, but their time is stretched thin. Reviews may be rushed, inconsistent, or influenced by competing interests. Increasing reliance on students or AI raises additional questions about reliability. Marshall needs to identify promising solutions without sacrificing confidence in the evaluations guiding his decisions.
The PITCH promise
PITCH helps Marshall translate mission needs into structured Challenges with clear requirements and evaluation criteria.
He can evaluate incoming technologies for mission alignment, readiness, novelty, and differentiation, using consistent criteria to identify promising opportunities and prioritize further review.
Rather than relying on opaque AI-generated judgments, Marshall can examine how evaluation scores were derived, assess their consistency and reproducibility, and validate the results. This gives him greater confidence in the assessments he uses to organize, prioritize, and make decisions about emerging technologies.
### Why PITCH? PITCH uses AI as an interactive interface to a structured database, turning individual innovation pitches into persistent records that can be developed, evaluated, and reviewed against a common framework. Marshall defines the problem, stakeholder priorities, performance targets, and evaluation criteria. Innovators can begin with an early idea, technical materials, or a draft proposal, then receive guided coaching to strengthen their concepts against those expectations. Rather than relying on independently prompted AI assessments, PITCH applies shared rubrics and evidence-grounded evaluation to support consistent, transparent review. Submissions and results remain organized within a common infrastructure, helping Marshall identify promising approaches, provide actionable feedback, and make better-informed decisions across a challenge or innovation program.
Marshall's path: Get Started
Explore how PITCH translates mission needs into structured Challenges, evaluates incoming technologies against defined criteria, and provides transparent results to support informed decisions.
#### Core Pathway **[DESIGN](/home#design):** Review this tab to understand how PITCH translates mission needs into structured Challenges with defined requirements and evaluation criteria. Focus on **Or Design Your Own Challenge Environment** to understand how Problem Statements, Quality Rubrics, and Reviewer Personas establish the evaluation environment. Return to the demos above to see example Challenges. **[DIFFERENTIATE](/home#differentiate):** Review how PITCH evaluates and organizes submissions to support Challenge-owner decisions, including scoring methodology, scoring validation, and presentation within a Value Proposition Canvas (VPC) to highlight mission alignment. Review the **Scorecard** and **Signal** views on [Demos](/demos) to see example reports. Note the difference between reports for an open Challenge and one that includes Technical Performance Targets in its design. #### Additional Capabilities **[DESIGN](/home#design):** Review **Adaptive Coaching and Context Injection** to understand how Problem framing influences the guidance respondents receive before submitting their concepts. This is an advanced feature that can improve the quality of responses when the Challenge is structured to coach users toward a target. **[DISCOVER](/home#discover):** Explore how PITCH supports discovery of emerging technologies, capabilities, and potential solution providers. Consider how problem-centered discovery could help identify promising approaches from disciplines or organizations outside your existing network. **[DISTILL](/home#distill):** This tab provides an overview of the respondent experience. In particular, the three **Try it!** examples provide Challenges with different levels of interaction, including uploads versus Pitch Chat. You may also wish to review additional [Demos](/demos) to experience the library of preconfigured workflows from the user's perspective. #### Example Use Cases Consider a mission need for which your organization receives numerous technology proposals. How could a structured Challenge help distinguish promising solutions from those that are technically impressive but poorly aligned with your requirements? What information would you need to confidently prioritize candidates for expert review?
Marshall's path: Develop & Refine
Create a Challenge environment to solicit and assess how responses address mission priorities.
**[DESIGN](/home#design):** Configure your own Challenge using the methodology described in **Or Design Your Own Challenge Environment**. As a first pass, select an existing Quality Rubric and Reviewer Persona from the available libraries. You can skip Technical Performance Targets on your first pass. You may return to your Challenge later to add customized elements. Test your Challenge with sample submissions to examine how your selected criteria influence the evaluations. Consider using contrasting examples to determine whether the results distinguish promising technologies from those that are poorly aligned with your mission. **[DIFFERENTIATE](/home#differentiate):** Return to this tab to understand how to access submissions to your Challenge and interpret Alignment, Quality, and portfolio-level results to identify promising concepts and determine which submissions warrant further attention. Pay particular attention to how your rubric criteria contribute to the **Readiness and Rigor** dimensions described in DIFFERENTIATE. Are both dimensions adequately represented? A rubric with only one criterion contributing to Rigor, for example, may provide limited differentiation among submissions, even when the evaluations are functioning correctly. **[Evaluation Framework](https://pitch.headframes.net/evaluation-framework):** Review the framework to understand how PITCH derives evaluation scores, supports consistency and reproducibility, and provides mechanisms for validating results. This is particularly important when using AI-assisted evaluations to prioritize technologies for further expert review. Consider what evidence of evaluation reliability you would need before using the results to support your organization's decisions.
Marshall's path: Test & Optimize
Refine your Challenge to guide respondents toward mission priorities, improve the quality and relevance of incoming concepts, and generate more actionable submissions.
**[DESIGN](/home#design):** Review **Adaptive Coaching and Context Injection** to understand how Problem framing can influence the guidance respondents receive as they develop their concepts. This capability extends PITCH beyond evaluating incoming technologies. For Challenge owners interested in improving the quality of their intake pipeline, Adaptive Coaching provides an opportunity to guide respondents toward mission needs before their concepts reach formal evaluation. Use **Test the Problem Design** to examine how your Problem framing influences the questions respondents encounter. Experiment with a broadly framed Problem and then a more specific version emphasizing knowledge gaps, mission priorities, or desired technical advances. Pay particular attention to the questions Adaptive Coaching asks. Are they directing respondents toward the challenges and outcomes you intended? If not, consider refining your Problem statement before inviting submissions.
Piper — Portfolio Intelligence Strategist
“How do I recognize what's emerging before it shows up in our performance metrics?”
Meet Piper. She works in research strategy and portfolio intelligence. She helps her organization understand its research capabilities, recognize promising directions, and make decisions about where to invest limited resources.
The problem
She's expected to recognize the organization's next major research directions and recommend where to invest development resources. Which emerging strengths could support a new center, major initiative, or strategic partnership? Promising concepts and complementary capabilities may be developing independently across departments, centers, programs, or partner sites, with no single participant seeing the larger picture. Some ideas never receive funding and disappear from view, even when they represent valuable emerging capabilities. Without visibility across these organizational boundaries, Piper risks making tomorrow's strategic decisions using yesterday's information.
The PITCH promise
PITCH helps Piper recognize emerging research strengths and opportunities before they appear in traditional performance metrics. As researchers and innovators develop and evaluate concepts through programs and Challenges, PITCH creates opportunities to capture emerging ideas, capabilities, interests, and readiness information. By coupling discovery with concept development, participants have a reason to keep their information current while contributing to a growing body of organizational intelligence—not another database requiring separate maintenance. By connecting discoverable concepts and capabilities across departments, centers, programs, and partner sites, this evolving intelligence—an expanding Virtual Rolodex—helps Piper recognize complementary strengths, identify opportunities for larger initiatives and partnerships, and prioritize developmental investments that could position the organization for its next major opportunity.
### Why PITCH? General-purpose AI can analyze proposals, summarize research portfolios, or help evaluate an internal competition. But it doesn't establish the institutional pipeline that continuously generates the information needed for those decisions. PITCH connects guided concept development, structured intake, and evaluation within a shared institutional workflow. Researchers develop their ideas against defined criteria, while their concepts and assessments contribute to an evolving body of institutional intelligence. Through **Grand Slide**, Piper can examine submissions and evaluation findings together across a Challenge or strategic theme, recognizing emerging strengths, gaps, and opportunities as the portfolio develops. Instead of treating each competition or development initiative as an isolated activity, Piper can use PITCH to connect today's research-development work with tomorrow's strategic decisions—where to invest, which capabilities to strengthen, and what larger opportunities the institution may be positioned to pursue.
Piper's path: Get Started
Explore how PITCH connects concept development, evaluation, and capability discovery to build evolving institutional intelligence that supports research strategy and investment decisions.
#### Consider Your Institutional Intelligence Feeds Your organization likely has multiple pipelines generating emerging research concepts and capabilities—proposal development, internal competitions, research centers, innovation programs, or partner sites. What might these activities reveal if their information were connected rather than scattered across separate records? **[DIFFERENTIATE](/home#differentiate):** Explore how our summative analysis across a challenge compares and prioritizies submissions and evaluation findings across a strategic theme. Examine how structured intake and ongoing concept development generate a consolidated view of emerging strengths, gaps, and opportunities. Consider how this intelligence could inform your institution's research strategy, development priorities, and investment decisions. **[DISCOVER](/home#discover):** Focus on **Discover Connections and Emerging Capability** to understand how PITCH builds visibility into emerging research interests, expertise, and capabilities. Review **Let the Community Discover the Concept** to understand how Pitch Cards, Projects, business cards, and visibility settings make selected information discoverable. Explore [Pitchfolio](/pitchfolio) to see how published concepts and researcher capabilities can be organized for discovery. **[DESIGN](/home#design):** Review **Or Design Your Own Challenge Environment**, **Engage across an Organization**, and **Engage a Collaborative Group** to understand how PITCH supports institutional intake, evaluation, and shared workflows. #### Example Use Cases Explore the recommended [Demos](/demos), and consider how submissions to these Challenges could contribute to evolving institutional intelligence. What might you learn not only from concepts that advance, but also from promising ideas that are incomplete, still developing, or not selected?
Piper's path: Develop & Refine
Develop an institutional innovation workflow that connects structured intake, evaluation intelligence, and discoverable research capabilities.
**[DESIGN](/home#design):** Choose an existing institutional internal competition or developmental workflow that you want to support with PITCH. Use its established requirements and evaluation criteria to create or adapt a Challenge, Quality Rubric, and Reviewer Persona. Refer to **Or Design Your Own Challenge Environment** for guidance. Set up appropriate organizational or collaborative-group access for the people involved. This allows shared evaluation resources and coordinated participation across departments, programs, or partner organizations. Work with your research development team or the PITCH administrator at [innovate@headframes.net](mailto:innovate@headframes.net) if assistance is needed. **[DIFFERENTIATE](/home#differentiate):** Run two or three representative submissions through the selected Challenge. Include examples with different levels of readiness or alignment. Examine whether the results distinguish concepts ready to advance from those warranting further development, including promising capabilities that might otherwise be overlooked. As needed, consult the **[Evaluation Guidelines](/evaluation-framework)** to understand how Alignment, Rigor, and Readiness are distinguished and how Quality Rubric design can influence scoring uncertainty. **[DISCOVER](/home#discover):** Configure your Challenge to encourage participants to publish appropriate concepts to [Pitchfolio](/pitchfolio). Recommend relevant categories and organizational or group visibility settings; the Challenge has recommended publishing settings but users approve final share. Encourage participants to establish virtual business cards containing their expertise, research interests, affiliations, and relevant capabilities or facilities. This makes emerging capabilities discoverable through PITCH's matchmaking features, supporting connections beyond the immediate competition or developmental workflow.
Piper's path: Test & Optimize
Explore how connected and longitudinal concept intelligence can reveal emerging institutional strengths, identify opportunities for collaboration, and inform strategic development and investment decisions.
**[DIFFERENTIATE](/home#differentiate):** Examine longitudinal evaluation results for a developing concept. Identify changes in readiness, quality, or alignment across successive evaluations. Use those findings to identify a concept or capability that may warrant additional institutional support, even if it has not yet produced a funded award. **[DISCOVER](/home#discover):** Search [Pitchfolio](/pitchfolio) for concepts or researcher capabilities related to a strategic institutional priority. Identify potential connections among researchers, disciplines, or organizations that could support a larger initiative or partnership. **Institutional Applications:** Combine your findings from evaluation and discovery to identify one potential developmental investment or collaborative opportunity. For institutional applications involving shared capabilities, longitudinal intelligence, or cross-site partnerships, contact [innovate@headframes.net](mailto:innovate@headframes.net).
Try it! Relevant Demos for Essie
Explore PITCH through these example Challenges. Each has been preconfigured with a Problem and evaluation framework using the principles introduced in DESIGN. These examples illustrate different applications of PITCH and can be customized to suit your needs.
Select Challenge to experience the workflow firsthand and receive real-time feedback on your own your concept. Select Signal to preview an example evaluation without completing the Challenge, or Output Mockup to preview the stakeholder's evaluation report.
- NSF CAREER Project Framing →
Develop and refine your research concept in the context of NSF CAREER expectations. Explore how evaluator-aware feedback can strengthen your framing before proposal development.
Also worth exploring: Proposal Readiness & Red Team Review →
Apply it: Essie's Path in PITCH P.I.
Your recommended path highlights activities for exploring PITCH independently across the five capability tabs—Design, Distill, Deepen, Discover, and Differentiate. Get Started helps you become familiar with the methodology. Develop & Refine guides you in applying PITCH to your specific challenge. Test & Optimize offers a deeper iterative experience. Concept Prototyping is a cycle: revisit activities, try different approaches, or explore other capabilities at any time.
Objective
Independently develop your first focused concept prototype, see how it aligns with an existing opportunity, and use preliminary quality feedback to identify opportunities for improvement through the eyes of potential reviewers.
What to Do
Core Pathway
DESIGN: Review Quick Start to explore existing Problems and Challenges in our library. As needed, learn how to upload your own solicitation to customize your Problem.
DISTILL: Review the introductory explanation of concept prototyping and Test Your Prototype to understand how PITCH helps researchers develop, evaluate, and refine emerging concepts. Pay particular attention to how evaluation feedback reflects the expectations of different reviewers and funding opportunities.
Example Use Cases
Select a Challenge from one of our Demos to experience different approaches to developing and evaluating a concept prototype. These demos are pre-configured use cases with a problem and evaluation predefined. Note: The NSF CAREER Challenge uses Adaptive Coaching; you will be prompted to provide details and piroirties from your specific program. Please refer to the program description to find these details, as they will be used in the interactive chat to help you define and specifically address these targets. Although optional, investigating and distilling your technical context helps you understand how your proposed research relates to the broader field, while allowing Adaptive Coaching to ask more relevant questions about your concept.
Alternatively, go to Pitch and choose a problem, evaluator, and scoresheet of your choice. Review the alignment and evaluation scores and iterate.
Additional Resources
DESIGN: Review Or Design Your Own Challenge Environment to learn how to configure your own Problem and evaluation environment.
Evaluation Framework: Understand how PITCH evaluations are conducted, how scores are derived, and how to interpret the resulting feedback.
DEEPEN: Explore advanced tools for optimizing your final outcome, including risk and contingency planning and development of a risk–reward matrix.
Objective
Refine your concept through iterative evaluation, using different Quality Rubrics and Reviewer Personas to distinguish weaknesses in the concept itself from differences in evaluator expectations.
What to Do
DISTILL: Return to your concept prototype on Pitch and revise it in response to your initial evaluation. Focus on strengthening the problem significance, differentiation, and case for investment rather than simply improving the writing.
Reevaluate after each meaningful revision. What improved? Which concerns remain? Are new questions emerging?
DISTILL: Experiment with different Quality Rubrics and Reviewer Personas using the dropdown menus on Pitch. Compare how different evaluation criteria and reviewer perspectives influence the feedback.
Identify weaknesses that persist across evaluations versus concerns that arise from a particular reviewer's expectations. Use these distinctions to prioritize your next revisions.
DESIGN: If the existing evaluation options do not adequately represent your funding opportunity, create or customize a Quality Rubric or Reviewer Persona.
For example, you might model the expectations of a particular funding program, a knowledgeable mentor, or a skeptical reviewer. You can also upload a relevant technical paper to customize a Reviewer Persona with expertise in your research area. This provides a more technically informed first-pass critique, beyond the general proposal-development feedback your research office or mentors may already provide.
Return to Pitch to evaluate your revised concept from that perspective.
Objective
Challenge your concept's underlying assumptions by testing alternative Problem framings, examining how different definitions of the problem, customer needs, and intended outcomes influence its significance and positioning.
What to Do
DESIGN: Create or adapt a Problem that reflects the research need, intended beneficiaries, pain points, and outcomes your concept is meant to address.
Experiment with alternative Problem framings. For example, with Adaptive Coaching on, consider a different outcome, pain point, or evaluation focus.
DISTILL: Return to your concept prototype on Pitch and evaluate it against your alternative Problem framing.
Examine whether the revised framing changes the perceived significance, alignment, or value of your approach. Does it expose an assumption you had overlooked? Does it reveal a stronger argument for why your research matters?
Use these insights to refine your concept's positioning and strengthen its case for investment.
Additional Capabilities
DEEPEN: Apply advanced development tools to your refined concept. Develop a risk–reward matrix to examine potential scientific or technical gains against the risks involved, and use risk and contingency planning to strengthen your proposed approach.
Consider how these elements could help you anticipate reviewer concerns, in particular, contingency plans, risk, and execution. Consider these ideas to present a more convincing case for feasibility and impact.
Use as much—or as little—structure as the question requires. Return and go deeper as you learn.
DESIGN: Design your Challenge Environment
A concept needs something to push against. A problem, performance targets, evaluation criteria, and perspective create the environment in which a developing concept can be tested, challenged or strengthened. Researchers and innovators naturally approach opportunities through the expertise, technologies, and capabilities they already have. Challenge design makes the other side of the opportunity explicit: what the stakeholder needs, what outcomes matter, and how success will be evaluated.
What problem are you trying to solve? What would meaningful success look like? What evidence would demonstrate progress—and through whose eyes should the concept be considered?
PITCH brings these elements together into a shared development and evaluation environment. Stakeholders can design that environment for others; Researchers can use it to challenge and strengthen their own concepts. With this Partnered Innovation design, the Problem and Solution develop in relation to one another, rather than in isolation.
DISTILL: Make the concept clear and compact enough to prototype
An emerging idea, capability, or problem is not yet a concept prototype. Even an existing physical prototype may not be fully vetted against alignment with a stakeholder. Concept prototyping asks: What is this? Why does it matter? What makes it credible? Who might care? What else could it be useful for? Working through these questions helps reveal the concept worth testing.
Moreover, a strong concept has to work beyond its creator. Can someone understand why it matters, explain what is different, and retell it when you are not in the room? Who will advocate for it—and what will they say?
Distillation creates something you can prototype with. A concise articulation of the problem, approach, differentiation, and value can be tested rapidly against different opportunities, stakeholder needs, and evaluation environments. What holds? What changes? What did you learn?
PITCH helps turn an emerging concept into that working prototype: clear enough for others to carry, structured enough to test, and lightweight enough to revise as you learn.
DEEPEN: Find out whether the concept holds together
DIFFERENTIATE: Decide what is ready, aligned, and worth advancing
When many concepts compete for attention, resources, or further development, the challenge isn't simply identifying which are “good.” For research leaders, funders, and innovation programs, the objective is not simply to rank submissions—it is to identify the strongest, best-aligned opportunities and concentrate support where it can improve competitiveness. Reviewer expertise is valuable but scarce, and institutional priorities may matter alongside sponsor requirements. Stakeholders need to understand meaningful differences: which concepts are aligned, where each is strong or weak, what trade-offs matter, and which are ready to advance.
PITCH provides a structured way to compare concepts across multiple dimensions without reducing the decision to a single score.
Note: Researchers may also use this step to pre-review their concept.
DESIGN asks: What should a concept be tested against? DIFFERENTIATE asks: What stands out when we test against it? Where do we invest or continue to devote attention?
DISCOVER: Turn concept development into institutional intelligence
Research organizations generate valuable information whenever researchers develop proposals, explore technologies, respond to opportunities, or participate in innovation programs. Yet much of that information remains scattered across documents and conversations, making it difficult to recognize emerging capabilities, complementary work, and opportunities for collaboration.
PITCH uses AI-guided development and evaluation to populate a structured, persistent database as part of these activities. Researchers and innovators receive individualized guidance while their developing concepts, capabilities, and evaluation results become organized information that can support broader decisions. That information becomes more valuable when connected across organizational boundaries. What one research group is developing may complement another group's capabilities. Separate departments may be working toward related goals without recognizing the connection. Organizations within a regional network may have complementary expertise that could support a shared opportunity.
PITCH makes it possible to examine developing work at these different scales—from individual programs and organizational units to institutions and participating networks. Rather than relying only on past awards, publications, and completed projects, organizations can also recognize emerging directions and explore how capabilities might be combined.
What else could this be? Who else might care? What changes when someone else encounters it? What emerging opportunity does this address? How do we strategically position to compete?