Law · Management · Science
Assessing the opportunity presented by a new invention requires an integrated set of skills.
No single discipline supplies them. A scientist can describe what a technology does, a lawyer can describe what can be protected, and a manager can describe what a market will pay for, but the decision about whether an invention is worth pursuing depends on all three considered together. Fusion teaches those skills as one integrated set, applied by interdisciplinary student teams to a real, undisclosed invention over a full academic year.
fu•sion
fyoo-zhuhn, noun
the process or result of joining two or more things or ideas together to form a single entity.
The name is meant literally. The program produces a single analysis formed by joining three disciplines. A team is finished when it can state one position that the legal, management, and scientific perspectives all support.
01 · The differentiator
An integration of three disciplines informing one outcome
Each discipline informs the same outcome, a position on what should be done with the technology, and each constrains the others. What can be protected affects what can be sold; what a payer will reimburse affects what is worth developing; and what the science can demonstrate affects both.
Law
Intellectual property law, corporate law fundamentals, securities and investment, and the industry regulation that defines a product's path to market.
Read more DisciplineManagement
Financial modeling, understanding value, industry structure, and the collaborative process through which early-stage technology is developed.
Read more DisciplineScience
Working depth in the scientific domain of the current program, and the technology focus areas the method has been applied to since 2009.
Read more02 · About Fusion
The program, briefly
Produced with the Case Western Reserve University School of Law.
The video dates from the program's early years. The program was developed to prepare professionals to make critical decisions around emerging technologies, and the problem it addresses is unchanged.
The video introduces the Fusion graduate certificate program, which continues to run. The certificate is under revision, so some requirements described in the video may have changed. The courses listed on this site are what is being taught now. If you are weighing enrollment, write to us.
03 · Now teaching
The 2026–27 sequence
Fusion is taught into two graduate programs: the M.S. in Regenerative Medicine and Entrepreneurship in the School of Medicine, and the Engineering, Innovation Management & Leadership concentration in the Case School of Engineering. The core course runs across the full academic year and meets in person in Cleveland. The engineering courses run alongside it, offered through the Division of Engineering Leadership and Professional Practice as electives in the Case School of Engineering's online master's programs, and are delivered entirely online and asynchronously, open to students in any time zone.
Opportunity Assessment
- Intellectual Property Management, Opportunity Assessment & CommercializationRGME 467 · 3 credits
- Intellectual Property Management and Opportunity AssessmentEPOM 410 · 3 credits · Online
- Technology CommercializationEPOM 412 · 3 credits · Online
Venture Formation
- Technology Ventures and IP StrategiesRGME 468 · 3 credits
The second half of the full-year sequence. Fall's opportunity assessment becomes spring's fundable company.
Innovation & Leadership
- Innovation: the Confluence of Need, Requirements and CreativityEPOM 411 · 3 credits · Online
- Innovation, Strategy and LeadershipEPOM 413 · 3 credits · Online
04 · Technology focus
What the teams are working on
Fusion concentrates on a chosen scientific domain. Teams work live invention disclosures in that field with the researchers who produced them. This cycle the program is running two domains in parallel, one in each school.
Regenerative Medicine
Driven in large part by our partnership with the M.S. in Regenerative Medicine and Entrepreneurship program at the National Center for Regenerative Medicine. Working with NCRM researchers, clinicians, industry experts, and entrepreneurs, teams evaluate the commercial potential of work in the field.
Subject inventions include delivery systems, therapies, and supporting technologies.
- Taught in
- RGME 467 · RGME 468
Neuromodulation
Northern Ohio holds unusual depth here: the Cleveland Clinic, University Hospitals, Case Western Reserve, the Cleveland FES Center, and the Advanced Platform Technology Center, alongside companies including Synapse Biomedical, Neuros Medical, and NDI Medical.
Its commercialization problems are hard: the therapeutic effect often sits in a stimulation method while the patentable ground around the device is thin.
- Taught in
- EPOM 410
- Prior cycles
- 2011–12 · 2013–14 · 2014–15
05 · Track record
Technology domains we have worked
Each cycle takes a different scientific domain, run with the researchers who lead that field. The analytical framework stays the same, and the domain determines which variables receive emphasis.
06 · Method
Applied skills
A toolbox of skills necessary for professionals to determine and support decisions around the opportunities presented by a complex technology. They are taught so that they hold whether the subject is a nerve stimulator, a water filter, or a cell therapy.
Structured Innovation
Disciplined approaches to innovation and research, including how to interrogate a disclosure before valuing it.
02Opportunity Assessment
Assessing commercial opportunity through four lenses to reach a defensible go or no-go decision.
03Business & Financial Modeling
Valuing early-stage opportunity: risk-adjusted NPV, phase-gate probabilities, and decision trees.
04Transaction Design
Designing the transaction that moves the technology: licensing, partnering, or company formation.
05Negotiation
Negotiating across parties who do not share a vocabulary, under term-sheet constraints.
06Communicating Value
Making the case to investors, partners, clinicians, and payers.
07 · Support
Why this program needs partners
The program depends on access. Every cycle requires live invention disclosures, researchers willing to teach their own field, clinicians and entrepreneurs who will spend time with student teams, and a review panel prepared to examine a pitch. That access is what distinguishes the program from a case-method course.
Since 2009 the program has worked through seven technology domains and graduated interdisciplinary cohorts into law firms, technology transfer offices, medical device companies, and startups. Support of any kind, whether a disclosure, time with a team, a seat on a review panel, or a gift, sustains that access.