# The (idea) valley of death The Valley of Death is a concept that pops up repeatedly in discussions about technology development. For a good short article on the Valley of Death and its relationship to technology readiness levels, see [[Technology Readiness and the Valley of Death]]. The term is [[Nebulous]] and overloaded, but it always refers to a situation where there is secretly much more or different work than you’d expect between a development stage that feels “complete” and its natural next step; often, this is between a proof of concept and a prototype or between a prototype and a manufactured process. Another frame is that ideas in the valley of death: * aren’t novel enough to publish and require too much coordination between disciplines or with industry to exist in academia * not sufficiently product-focused to build a startup around (yet) * Too far off the status quo to go anywhere in a corporate R&D lab Generally this covers [[Technology readiness level (TRL)]] 3-6 Things that are too high risk to be funded on their own but a portfolio of them is worth funding. <!-- #mental-model --> [Web URL for this note](http://notes.benjaminreinhardt.com/The+(idea)+valley+of+death) [Comment on this note](http://via.hypothes.is/http://notes.benjaminreinhardt.com/The+(idea)+valley+of+death)