The Translation Gap: Why Brilliant Work Stalls Before It Reaches the Market

By: Rubina Cohen (edited by Claude)

I get to live in one of the most brilliant states in the US. And no, I don't want to rename our state New America, but that's for another blog article. But, all kidding aside, It's undeniable. New Mexico produces an extraordinary amount of breakthrough thinking. National labs, research universities, established technology firms, a growing quantum sector, space and energy ventures, and a network of innovation centers make this state one of the most technically dense places in the country. Yet, anyone who has sat through a demo day, a contract negotiation, a board meeting, or an investor pitch here has probably watched a remarkable piece of work, explained by someone who understands it deeply, fail to connect with the people in the room.

New Mexico is where I see it up close, but the pattern is there across the technical industry. Wherever research labs, engineering teams, and emerging industries are trying to reach investors, customers, and decision-makers, the distance between what has been built and what is understood shapes what happens next.

We usually call this a pitching problem, as if it only affects early-stage founders. I've come to see it as something broader, a translation gap. It shows up in startups and in companies that have been operating for a decade or more, and I believe it's one of the most underestimated leadership challenges in the innovation economy.

Brilliance doesn't transfer by itself

Technical professionals are trained in a particular culture of communication. In research and engineering, credibility comes from precision, qualification, and caution. You hedge because overstatement can cost you your reputation, and you lead with method because method is what your peers evaluate. Peer review isn't pitching, and the habits that earn respect in a lab or an engineering team can work against you in a boardroom, a procurement meeting, a strategic partnership conversation and with acquiring customers.

People who invest in and advise deep tech ventures see this often. One investor at Cambridge Innovation Capital estimated that more than two-thirds of the deep tech founders he meets struggle to explain their technology clearly, and cautioned that a strong publication record carries little weight once you're in the market. An analysis published in Health Management, Policy and Innovation named the ability to tell a simple, compelling story, and to deliver it repeatedly with confidence and clarity, as a core requirement for scientists raising money.

The same pattern continues well after a company is funded. Established tech firms have to explain their value to enterprise buyers who didn't come from the field, to government agencies weighing contracts, to boards deciding where to invest next, and to new hires they're trying to attract. Engineers who move into leadership roles often find that the skills that got them promoted aren't the ones their new responsibilities require.

Quantum companies face an especially steep version of this challenge. They're asking partners and customers to commit resources to technology that most decision-makers can't evaluate on their own, on timelines that are still uncertain, in a field crowded with hype. Being both credible and compelling in that environment takes real skill, and the companies that develop it will have an advantage in the years ahead.

Technical leaders are often excellent communicators within their own fields. The challenge is that their next audience, whether an investor, a customer, an agency, or a board, listens for different things.

The research says framing moves decisions

Some of the most useful evidence comes from studies of what happens in the room when money is on the line. Researchers Dana Kanze, Laura Huang, Mark Conley and Tory Higgins analyzed investor question-and-answer sessions at TechCrunch Disrupt. They found that investors tended to ask some founders about potential gains and others about potential losses, and that founders tended to answer in whichever frame they were given. That had real consequences, with each additional risk-focused question associated with roughly $3.8 million less in total funding raised.

The encouraging part is that founders who reframed their answers to risk-focused questions may be able to raise more. That tells us we're looking at something people can learn and practice. Other research points in the same direction. A randomized study using brain imaging found that the same pitch delivered with high founder passion increased informal investor interest by 26 percent and investor neural engagement by 39 percent. A field experiment by David Clingingsmith, Will Drover and Scott Shane found that pitch training improved entrepreneurs' pitches, and that over the following 30 months trained founders kept refining their pitches, joined more competitions and accelerators, and kept learning well beyond the pitch itself.

These studies focus on fundraising, where outcomes are easiest to measure. The dynamic they describe, where framing shapes how a decision-maker perceives risk and opportunity, is familiar to anyone who has presented a technical roadmap to a leadership team or answered a buyer's questions about a new platform. How an idea is translated affects whether it gets funded, adopted, approved, or overlooked, and deliberate practice makes a difference.

What this means for innovation centers

Innovation centers invest heavily in the infrastructure of success: space, equipment, mentors, capital introductions, and programming. Those investments matter. When a company struggles at demo day, loses a major contract, or stalls in a partnership conversation, though, the follow-up rarely names translation as a factor. It usually gets described as "not ready," "too early," or "wrong fit."

Translation shapes almost every outcome a center tracks, including follow-on funding, customer acquisition, contract wins, partnership deals, and the ability to recruit talent. That's true for early-stage tenants and for the established companies that anchor an ecosystem and often mentor the next generation. When technical leaders at every stage can make their work understandable to the people who can move it forward, the benefits spread across the whole community.

From a regenerative perspective, this is how living systems work. Value moves through a network when it's converted into a form the next part of the system can take in. Nutrients, signals, and information all follow this pattern, and innovation ecosystems do too. This holds true for innovation ecosystems anywhere in the world.

Translation as a leadership capability

I'd like to see us treat translation as a core leadership capability, as essential to technical leadership as the technical work itself. Good translation keeps the depth that makes a company credible and organizes it around what the listener needs in order to make a decision. It answers three questions: what is this, why does it matter to you specifically, and what changes if you act? It also means noticing when a conversation has shifted into a defensive frame and guiding it back toward opportunity.

All of this can be learned, and it tends to develop fastest among peers. A founder preparing for a first raise and an executive preparing for a board presentation are working through versions of the same challenge, and each has a lot to learn from the other.

​An invitation

This is why I'm hosting Executive Roundtables on the Translation Gap for founders, executives, and technical leaders across New Mexico's innovation ecosystem, from early-stage ventures to established technology and quantum companies.

It's a candid, peer-level conversation. Together we'll explore where translation is showing up in your work, what it's costing your business, and what's being left on the table when the people you need can't fully understand what you've built. Participants leave with a clearer view of where their message is breaking down, fresh perspective from leaders facing the same challenge, and a live example of what a stronger translation can sound like.

I'm offering the roundtable at no cost to innovation centers, incubators, and accelerators as a resource for their companies and tenants. If you lead a program and would like to bring this conversation to your community, especially ahead of a demo day, investor showcase, industry event, or a cohort milestone, I'd love to talk with you. 

If you're outside New Mexico and this challenge sounds familiar in your own organization or ecosystem, I'd welcome the conversation as well.

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Rubina Cohen is a Next Economy Strategist and founder of Firefly Strategies Global. For two decades she has helped leaders and organizations translate complex ideas into strategy, stories, and outcomes that move people to act. Her work draws on a Regenerative framework grounded in biomimicry, Indigenous wisdom, and quantum principles, informed by her background in communications research and studies in applied neurobiology and neuroscience. She is based in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

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Sources
Clingingsmith, D., Drover, W., & Shane, S. (2023). Examining the outcomes of entrepreneur pitch training: An exploratory field study. Small Business Economics, 60(3).
Commercializing deep tech startups: A practical guide for founders and investors. (2021, February 10). TechCrunch. Also published by Cambridge Innovation Capital.
Commercializing science: Turning life science discoveries into lifesaving products. Part 1: Overcoming barriers to commercialization of original research. (2022, April 27). Health Management, Policy and Innovation (HMPI).
Kanze, D., Huang, L., Conley, M. A., & Higgins, E. T. (2018). We ask men to win and women not to lose: Closing the gender gap in startup funding. Academy of Management Journal, 61(2), 586–614.
Shane, S., Drover, W., Clingingsmith, D., & Cerf, M. (2020). Founder passion, neural engagement and informal investor interest in startup pitches: An fMRI study. Journal of Business Venturing, 35(4), 105949.
Weisul, K. (2018, November). There are 2 types of investor questions. Here's how to nail both. Inc.