The year started with one more Tech Demo Day organised by the EIC Tech to Market (T2M) Venture Building Programme, this time dedicated to Artificial Intelligence. The EIC T2M Venture Building Programme aims at helping to build startups by exploiting promising research results through venture building services. On the Tech Demo Day, a bright group of EIC Pathfinder and EIC Transition projects pitched their innovations to a diversified panel of experts.
The event was held in collaboration with the EIC Programme Manager Franc Mouwen, who believes that this Programme “is critical in the difficult transition from invention to innovation process.” He highlights that this event helped “potential entrepreneurs explore the many aspects of technological driven entrepreneurship in a structured way. Even though many technologies are still in the early stages, it is critical that the entrepreneurial journey at that early stage already commences”.
EIC beneficiaries’ testimonies
We spoke with Florian Heigwer, from German Cancer Research Center, representing the project ACHILLEUS, and with Rudy Semola, from University of Pisa, representing the project EMERGE.
ACHILLEUS is developing and validating an AI-powered phenotypic drug discovery platform that leverages a living biobank of patient-derived organoids (PDOs) and scalable machine learning solutions for image analysis to identify therapeutics targeting stem cell signalling pathways in colorectal cancer. Novel drugs discovered using this platform aim to improve the lives of patients suffering from colorectal cancer.
EMERGE focuses on developing a novel concept of collaborative awareness for collectives of minimal artificial agents, exploring how collaborative awareness can enable enhanced levels of interoperability and cooperative behavior. To this end, EMERGE is building a new AI framework based on a novel efficient neural computing paradigm and lifelong and evolutionary learning mechanisms.
For Rudy Semola, the representative of EMERGE, “participating in the first phase of the Programme has proven to be highly beneficial. Firstly, the opportunity to collect feedback from experts in the field has been invaluable. Their insights and perspectives have provided us with a fresh and constructive outlook on our project, enabling us to refine and enhance our business idea. Moreover, this Programme has opened doors to follow-up meetings and interactions with key stakeholders. This extended engagement allows us to delve deeper into discussions, both business and more technical side enabling us to improve and better communicate our project”.
Rudy also mentioned the opportunity to create a robust network with stakeholders, and the representative of ACHILLEUS agrees. For Florian Heigwer, “the ACHILLEUS project benefits greatly from the experience gained from other projects, the close contacts with market experts and industry leaders, and the dynamism and positive reinforcement provided by the EIC T2M team”.
Florian Heigwer added that the experts’ feedback was very inspiring and helped the team “to improve our pitch and frame our value proposition to better express our vision to a diverse audience”.
Rudy Semola shares the same opinion “the most interesting part of this first phase was the insightful feedback from experts, pinpointing areas for improvement and validating our project’s potential for future growth, (…) and the preparation of a 5-minute pitch helped us to communicate the technology and its potential benefits to non-tech people”.
What’s next?
Both projects moved to the Opportunities’ Exploration phase in the Programme, where they will receive guidance on feasibility from a team of experts with business insights that can support them with recommendations for improvement.
The experts’ feedback
We had the opportunity to also hear from Belén Suarez, CEO at Go To Innovation, and Isabel Barberá, AI Advisor & Co-Founder at Rhite, members of the panel of experts.
For Belén Suarez, programmes like the EIC Tech to Market Venture Building are crucial. According to her, “innovation means deploying solutions in the market. How to enter and scale solutions from an adequate go-to-market strategy and keeping the customer-centric approach from the beginning is one of the main missed points (…) so providing training and development capabilities would allow the projects to properly manage uncertainties and face challenges”.
Isabel Barberá agrees that the EIC Tech to Market Venture Building Programme can play an important role in offering support and guidance. “Programmes like this are a way to bring into life innovative ideas that could have an important and beneficial economic and/or societal impact. A lot of innovators are mostly busy with the development of their solutions and project teams must learn what they need to do to bring successfully their products into the market”, explains Isabel.
We asked both experts if they could give two pieces of advice to our early-stage innovators, what would they be. Isabel Barberá said “use a holistic approach, talk to others, learn from others, get out of your comfort zone and find mentors with different backgrounds”. For Belén Suarez, the main advice is “to fully understand the potential and the sustainability in terms of technological developments and innovation, and to identify very clearly the key factors of success to properly manage the R&I efforts and innovate effectively and efficiently”.
If you’re interested in knowing more about the Tech Demo Days, watch here the beneficiaries' and experts’ testimonies.
About the EIC Tech to Market (T2M) Venture Building Programme
The EIC Tech to Market Venture Building Programme aims to help build start-ups to exploit promising research results through venture building services, comprising a range of activities from identification of promising business ideas to venture creation and development.
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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.