The EIC Transition Grant offers €2.5M for Commercialisation of research based innovations

You have an exciting innovation at TRL4 and an identified application, but now what?

The European Innovation Council is offering up to €2.5M through the EIC Transition Grant. This will allow you to develop your innovation to TRL6 and demonstrate the value of the technology in an application. The fund is open to projects based on results obtained through previous EIC Pathfinder or ERC PoC projects.

The expected outcomes of your EIC Transition project are:

  1. an effective technology, demonstrated for its intended application
  2. a business model, its initial validation and a business plan for its development to market

The program offers two different types of calls. The EIC Transition Open is a bottom-up approach that allows applicants to submit a project pertaining to any type of domain, technology or research area. The EIC Transition Challenges are top-down calls that invite applicants to respond to pre-defined challenges addressing specific technological breakthroughs. In 2022:

  • Green digital devices for the future
  • Process and system integration of clean energy technologies
  • RNA based therapies and diagnostics for complex or rare genetic disorders

EIC Transition grant engineer

What are the elements of a winning proposal?

As many different factors could contribute to the success of a proposal, this is not an easy question to answer. These factors may vary widely according to the type of project, field of research and relevant industry. However, a few elements are crucial for success when submitting your proposal to the EIC Transition grant. Here they are:

  • A project with high novelty and significant impact, led by a strong, multidisciplinary consortium, composed of: (1) the technology developer (2) an end user or other industrial entity who can demonstrate the technology in the application-relevant environment and (3) a business champion who is willing and able to take the lead on the commercialisation to bring the innovation to market
  • The team has already carried out market pre-validation. This has shown good acceptability from potential end users and good problem/solution fit. The team has a good understanding of end user needs has initialised a network  among potential customers.
  • The innovation has strong business potential and is backed by a sound and sustainable commercialisation plan. The technology development work has been adapted to the commercial strategy, and not the other way round.
  • A well written and interesting proposal that tells the story of the project, its impact and its intended route to market in a coherent and effective way, keeping the evaluator in mind at each step of the process.

What is the evaluator thinking?

Sometimes, a technically sound, high-impact project led by a strong consortium and with potentially promising business potential, receives a good evaluation but fails to receive funding. This may happen due to a common drawback. The coordinators of the project and the proposal writing are not thinking like an evaluator.

To convince the evaluators to invest in your research, you must understand their perspective and address their demands. Often times, academic researchers are the ones coordinating and writing funding proposals. Academic researchers are great at presenting research projects. However, a research project carries significant risks for producing something with commercial value.  In such proposals, a lack of business planning could result in a very long time to market. For the EIC Transition grant, applicants should pivot away from rigid research thinking. It is crucial to show how the project supports generating revenues a few years down the line.

Want to submit a proposal to the EIC Transition Grant? We want to partner with you.

The 2022 cut-offs are coming up on the 4th May and 28th September. Should you require a business development partner, support with consortium building or proposal coordination and writing, we invite you to get in touch. We can also help you with interview preparation or re-submission of an unsuccessful proposal. We know how it’s done, and we have already gained two successful EIC transition grants that will kick off later in 2022.