Innovation Fund: Lessons learnt from projects

Wheesbee

Wheesbee enhances the innovation fund application process by providing Business Intelligence tools to analyze data from past projects. It helps identify trends, best practices, and strategic insights, improving decision-making and increasing the chances of successful, impactful proposals.

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Competitiveness

The weak state of the European PV market limits companies’ ability to develop competitive and technologicaly advanced products.

Costs

Large energy-intensive companies (e.g., cement, chemical and steel industries) bear the greatest burdenof ETS costs. A new approach is needed to help them align their innovation efforts with the broader goals of the Innovation Fund.

Criteria

  • Meeting the specific eligibility requirements (financial maturity and GHG emission avoidance) of the Innovation Fund remains challenging.
  • System and societal integration: demonstrate a thorough understanding of how your project fits into a larger system, where there is risk, and what countermeasures will address identified challenges.

Financial maturity challenges

  • Inconsistent information in the application: Key data are often not well aligned.
  • Lack of evidence and justification for assumptions: For example, projected revenues often assume a certain purchase or sales price, but there is rarely any evidence or studies to support that data.
  • Lack of Capacity to define a clear reference case.
  • Difficulties in developing a coherent and realistic business plan.

Technical maturity

  • Imbalance between innovation and technical maturity.
  • Lack of evidence in terms of scale up ability and technical feasibility.
  • A structured validation strategy is crucial to align innovation with feasibility and ensure a smooth transition to scale-up.

Internal resources

  • Importance of having internal resources (personnel and expertise). Need for strategic planning, external support, and early team allocation to improve proposal success rates.
  • Build a solid team and allocate enough time and internal resources to document your project. Remember that the commercial challenges must have at least as much focus as the technical ones.