Participants of 11 FET Innovation Launchpad (ILP) projects came to Brussels to actively participate at a workshop held last week organised by the European Innovation Council Task Force for the Pathfinder. This event was designed to stimulate networking, develop collective intelligence on innovation management and exchange best practises.
FET (Future and Emerging Technologies) projects are set out to challenge current thinking and pave the way for innovations and radical new ideas. In addition, the FET programme also offers FET Innovation Launchpad grants to fund innovation related work, i.e. activities which were not scheduled to be funded by the original projects. The funding aims to improve the societal and market acceptance of these high-potential innovations and bring them closer to the market.
The FET Innovation Launchpad call (whose next call cut off is in October 2020) aims at turning results from FET-funded projects into genuine societal or economic innovations, by focusing further steps for those results, like the definition of a commercialisation process, market and competitiveness analysis, technology assessment, verification of innovation potential, consolidation of intellectual property rights and business case development.
11 FET projects had the opportunity to conduct a target presentation of their progress that was followed by challenging questions and inspirational discussions with four experts in the fields of intellectual property, technology transfer and business modelling: Laura Macdonald, Eugene Sweeney, Jakob Haardt and Paul Celen. BESAFE/ISBEN, PEDPOC/RECORD-IT, MRI PADS/Mcube, SMARBLE/Phoenix, GammaCam/SUPERTWIN, CLIMEX/DOLFINS, UNILIB/MRG-Grammar, CARBP/MRG-Grammar, EggSorter/ASSISIbf and SOLQC/MRG-Grammar were the projects involved in this workshop. For 2 days the beneficiaries had the opportunity to think collectively on the steps needed to reach the market.
From an invention to an innovation
Project participants appreciated to receive answers to urgent questions concerning their technology demonstration and business strategies, and to meet like-minded researchers and innovators. The PEDPOC project from MOMM Diagnostics was one of the participants and the CEO / Co-founder Mathias Wipf took part of this workshop to learn more about business strategy.
“The FET ILP programme is a great opportunity to study the feasibility of a scientific result for its application in a marketable project. MOMM is profiting from the business coaching service under the EIC and this is a great opportunity to gain inside know how and learn how to transition from an innovation to a product”, he added.
MOMM Diagnostics conceives a new generation of in-vitro diagnostic tests for early diagnosis of pre-eclampsia. This pregnancy disorder remains to this day one of the leading causes for maternal mortality and early diagnosis are vital to minimize complications and prepare adequately for birth. The main goal of this project is to develop the prevent test to diagnose preeclampsia earlier and during pre-natal visits.
EIC Accelerator can be the next step
The PEDPOC project received an EU contribution of € 100 000 with the program FET Innovation Launchpad to consolidate the intellectual property rights and develop a demonstrator to approach investors. During the presentation, Mathias Wipf announced that MOMM is currently looking for funding to accelerate the PE test development and is already considering the EIC Accelerator program as a next step.
During the feedback, the business coach expert focused especially on the competitiveness analysis and in the business strategy to measure the status of advancement of the different projects.
“I want to push them to think about the value proposition and the business model. How could they understand that the product was acceptable in the market and people wanted to pay for that solution?”, raised the coach Paul Celen during an interview.
During the workshop the participants also performed the Innovation Radar exercise, which gave the project teams concrete feedback on the maturity of their innovations and advice on possible next steps.
DISCLAIMER: This information is provided in the interest of knowledge sharing and should not be interpreted as the official view of the European Commission, or any other organisation.