Too often Research & Development projects succeed technically but fail to reach the market or to find commercial success. The Market Connection Program Element is an innovative centralized program-wide approach to improve the market focus of the Lighting Research Program activities and thereby to increase the ultimate commercial viability of the Program's technology products. It provides all the LRP's technical projects with consistent product assessment and commercialization recommendations from key lighting market experts.

The Market Connection Element assists and advises the LRP developers of the most market-ready products in the transition from R&D to production and market entry, and provides a consistent set of product-descriptive materials for use in industry reference and public education by the California Energy Commission, individual product developers, and other market actors.

The Program Element centralizes and enhances the technology transfer activities within each of the technology development projects, resulting in both economies and consistent quality across the Program.

Specific issues addressed the Market Connection Program Element include the following:

• R&D results, products and technologies are often not adopted in the marketplace because of lack of market connection. Too often R&D successes that save energy and peak electric demand fail to have commercial success because of the lack of market knowledge built into their product specifications, lack of communication or outreach to the appropriate organizations, groups or markets.

• The designer, architecture, specifier, builder, facilities manager or owner often does not use R&D results because the results are not packaged into their design tool or specifications. A corollary issue is that the target audience does not realize the advantages of the new products.

• California energy building codes require R&D and applications information and documentation for changes in the codes. R&D need to be identified, planned and implemented for results to be incorporated into the code process.