Although Europe excels in research and creates innovative deep tech solutions with great potential, it struggles to scale up its startups into influential growth companies.
A new report, prepared for DTU by the international innovation platform Hello Tomorrow, identifies the challenges and what it will take to solve them.
"It is clear that Europe has the potential through its excellent research environments, but lacks cohesion. Without a common action plan, we risk groundbreaking technologies never leaving the laboratory. Therefore, there is a task at hand to remove the barriers that are currently slowing down innovation," says DTU President Anders Bjarklev.
According to the report, the main barriers are a lack of capital, limited access to technical infrastructure, and regulatory obstacles across the 27 national borders of the European Union.
Therefore, the report proposes the following three strategic initiatives:
- Positioning the Scaleup Europe Fund as a leading investor in deep tech companies. Among other things, by strategically focusing investments on Europe's critical technology areas, including quantum and biotechnology, and basing investments on technological advances rather than revenue.
- Create a common access charter for advanced infrastructure across Europe. This will ensure that startups have more open and equal access to test facilities and pilot plants.
- Establish "regulatory sandboxes" which, by streamlining Europe's 27 different national regulatory frameworks, can promote the testing of new solutions and faster implementation of technologies.
In addition, the report recommends that universities focus on attracting and retaining talent by rewarding the ability to combine research and innovation.
From ambition to action
The report bases its recommendations on extensive interviews and workshops with actors across the entire innovation ecosystem, including entrepreneurs, investors, and public institutions.
It is published ahead of the international innovation conference ASCEND, which is being held under the Danish EU Presidency and hosted by DTU in collaboration with the Ministry of Higher Education and Science. The aim is for key players from across the EU innovation ecosystem to meet and discuss how the EU's Startup and Scaleup Strategy, published in May, can be translated into concrete action.
The report's three strategic initiatives form the framework for the discussions.
"It is crucial that we use the conference as a platform to strengthen cooperation across EU members so that we can bring the initiatives to life. Ambition must be converted into action to create global impact, and technical universities play a key role in this," says DTU President Anders Bjarklev.
DTU can contribute with concrete experience
Specifically for European universities, the report recommends that they strengthen their role in the deep tech ecosystem by creating career paths for research talents that reward commercialisation. Additionally, they should actively contribute to regulatory sandboxes that provide technical and legal advice.
Anders Bjarklev points out that over the past 12 years, DTU has been working on research commercialisation, talent development, and building an innovation ecosystem that is now internationally recognised.
As a result, in 2024, DTU was ranked in Denmark's top three in terms of patent applications. In the same year, DTU-based startups accounted for 21 percent of the total venture capital invested in Denmark, while 120 startups emerged from DTU.
Now, with the DTU SkyFactory scaling hub, DTU aims to bridge the gap in the value chain that hinders growth.
"DTU SkyFactory is a breakthrough in the university world, putting the deep tech startups with the greatest potential into a framework that gives them full backing and support to grow," says Anders Bjarklev.
The ambition is for every tenth DTU startup to become a growth company with international impact. According to Anders Bjarklev, this is part of DTU's contribution to the common European solutions highlighted in the report.
Another part involves sharing DTU's experiences.
"DTU's work with innovation has enabled us to build up valuable knowledge that can make a difference. Our role is therefore to strengthen European cooperation by presenting a proposal for the ASCEND conference such as this one and at the same time sharing our experiences with others," Anders Bjarklev says.
The ASCEND innovation conference will take place on November 25-26 in Copenhagen. The conference aims to formulate several concrete inputs for the implementation of the EU's Startup and Scaleup Strategy.
