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. What the program produces is not three disciplinary opinions delivered one after another, but a single analysis formed by joining them. A team is not finished until 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
The disciplines are integrated rather than presented in parallel. Each 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 actually 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 actually gets 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.
Yes, the program has been around a while, and the video makes that fairly obvious. It was developed early in this century to prepare professionals to compete and to make mission-critical decisions around emerging technologies. The production values have aged; the problem the program addresses has not.
On the substance: the video introduces the Fusion graduate certificate program, which continues to run. The certificate is currently under revision, so some requirements described in the video may have changed. The courses listed throughout this site are what is being taught now. If you are weighing enrollment, write to us and we will tell you where things stand.
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; the engineering sequence runs alongside it.
Opportunity Assessment
- Intellectual Property Management, Opportunity Assessment & CommercializationRGME 467 · 3 credits
- Intellectual Property Management and Opportunity AssessmentEPOM 410 · 3 credits
- Technology CommercializationEPOM 412 · 3 credits
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
- Innovation, Strategy and LeadershipEPOM 413 · 3 credits
04 — Technology focus
What the teams are working on
Fusion goes deep into a chosen scientific domain rather than skimming several. Teams work live invention disclosures in that field, supported by 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 — alongside clinicians, industry experts, and entrepreneurs — teams evaluate the commercial potential of ground-breaking work in the field.
Subject inventions include delivery systems, therapies, and the supporting technologies that make clinical outcomes possible.
- 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.
It teaches well because 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; what changes is the emphasis placed on particular variables, which the domain itself determines.
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 — how to interrogate a disclosure before you value it.
02Opportunity Assessment
Assessing commercial opportunity under four lenses, leading to a go / no-go you can defend.
03Business & Financial Modeling
Valuing early-stage opportunity — risk-adjusted NPV, phase-gate probabilities, decision trees.
04Transaction Design
Designing the deal that moves the technology — licensing, partnering, formation.
05Negotiation
Negotiating across parties who do not share a vocabulary, under real term-sheet constraints.
06Communicating Value
Making the case to the people who decide — investors, partners, clinicians, 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 real 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 — a disclosure, time with a team, a seat on a review panel, or a gift — goes directly to what makes the program work.