Investors in hard technology increasingly want an outside view on whether a company can manufacture what it has invented. Supply is rising to meet the demand, and most of it will arrive as frameworks.
The supply
A framework costs little to produce and less to copy. Expect a slide with nine levels, a traffic-light chart and a memorable name from consultancies, research centres and advisory boutiques. Some will be useful. The buyer cannot tell which from the slides, because the slides will look alike.
The scales themselves are old. NASA graded technology readiness from the 1970s, and the US Department of Defense has published manufacturing readiness levels since the mid-2000s. The market has lacked a record of such scores given by a named party, dated, published and later set against what the company went on to do.
The precedent
Credit had the same problem for most of the last century. Plenty of firms offered opinions on whether borrowers would pay. The ones that became infrastructure published ratings that were dated and attributable, built records that could be checked against defaults, and from 1975 gained formal standing when the US Securities and Exchange Commission began recognising established agencies for regulatory purposes.
The agencies were not always right. Their value lay in being wrong in public, on dated paper, where anyone could count. Their best-known failure, in 2008, owed much to a conflict the questions below are designed to catch: the issuer paid for the rating. A score earns trust through its record, and a record takes years to build.
The five questions
1. Show me a score you gave before the outcome was known. Dated, public and unchanged since.
2. Who signs it? A named person whose professional standing rides on the note. “The team” is not an answer.
3. Can the score go up if the client objects? A rating that can be negotiated upwards measures the client’s persistence.
4. Do you also sell the fix? If the firm that scores the gap is paid to close it, the score is a sales lead.
5. What happened when you were wrong? An honest record contains misses. A provider that cannot show one either has no record or is not showing it.
The cost of answering
Nobody can answer the first and fifth questions on day one. They are answered only with time, a register and the nerve to publish. The second costs a named person their comfort. The fourth costs revenue, which is why it is the question most worth asking.
The answers, applied to Kaipability
Kaipability records dated scores on an append-only register. Its back-tests against companies whose outcomes are now public record calibrate the method, and are shared with qualified buyers. They do not answer the first question, which only live scores can. Live scores are being added now, so the record is short, and Kaipability will say how short when asked. Every note is signed by a named person. A major finding cannot be passed over, and a score can be held or lowered but never raised under pressure. Kaipability also does advisory work, and does not rate a company it has advised, or advise a company it has rated, within two years.
The work
Manufacturing Engineers walk the line, trace each claim to its evidence and name the step that will not hold at rate. Then they sign it, and the signature stays on the record whatever happens next.
Kaipability puts that signature on an append-only register. Funds, lenders and primes that want a score they can hold to account later can commission one now.
If you rely on readiness scores, or are about to commission one, put the five questions to us as well.
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