Jonathan Wareham, Esade professor and ATTRACT’s Project Consortium Board member, analyses Europe’s stand on deep tech and how the ATTRACT project is helping to build an innovation ecosystem for deep-tech development in the latest blog post of the Lisbon Council.
“In its drive towards digital sovereignty, the European Commission is taking a big bet on so-called “deep tech,” a group of promising European startups that “provide technology solutions based on substantial scientific or engineering challenges,” according to a crowd-sourced definition. These discoveries, in turn, have one crucial thing in common: they are often difficult projects based on complex, still-in-the-laboratory science, and they often require lengthy research and development incubation periods and large capital investment before commercialisation.
The good news is Europe has excellent deep tech; lots of it, in fact. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen recently boasted to DigitalEurope, an industry association, that “Europe’s ‘deep tech’ companies are worth a combined €700 billion today, and they are growing at incredible speed. Europe is a rising digital power.” In January 2021, for the first time, the European Innovation Council Fund began investing directly in deep-tech startup equity and complementing this direct ownership with mentoring and support through the European Innovation Council Accelerator, previously known as the “SME Instrument,” a programme that seeks to identify promising European startups and help them grow to scale and conquer global markets.
Jonathan Wareham, Esade professor and ATTRACT’s Project Consortium Board member, analyses Europe’s stand on deep tech and how the ATTRACT project is helping to build an innovation ecosystem for deep-tech development in the latest blog post of the Lisbon Council. “In its drive towards digital sovereignty, the European Commission is taking a big bet on so-called “deep tech,” a group […]
