What are the milestones to be reached for an academic asset?

How to valuate an early-stage though promising asset? To what extent do experimented actors help the bio-entrepreneur to aim for a realistic maturation and validation roadmap? How do they help the managing team to understand value inflection points? How do the industry players (pharma, biotech, VC) handle this issue of granting of value to those assets? How could industrial players help academic institutions and TTOs avoid making mistakes at the very early development stages?