Scientists Map a New Route to Turn European Research Into Innovation

Europe produces world-class science but struggles to convert its discoveries into technologies, products and companies, and a group of researcher-innovators believes the problem can be fixed with structural reform rather than more money alone. In a Policy Forum published in Science, a network of more than 120 scientists from over 20 countries in the European Research Area sets out a detailed agenda for changing how the European Union funds innovation and how universities treat researchers who want to commercialise their work. The paper, titled Enhancing Europe’s Competitiveness by Empowering Researchers as Innovators, argues that persistent institutional and funding barriers prevent scientific excellence from generating its full economic and societal impact, and it proposes concrete mechanisms to close the gap between laboratory breakthroughs and market-ready solutions.

The initiative comes from INPACT!, a network launched in 2023 that brings together scientist-innovators, mainly grantees of the European Research Council, who have first-hand experience of trying to move fundamental discoveries toward application. The authors combined this direct experience with economic analysis of European funding programmes to identify reforms that could strengthen Europe’s ability to translate research into innovation. Among the contributors are researchers from several Italian institutions, including the Italian Institute of Technology, IMT Lucca, Politecnico di Torino, Politecnico di Milano and Università Bocconi. Gianni Ciofani, co-author of the Policy Forum and coordinator of the Italian Institute of Technology’s Center for Materials Interfaces in Pontedera, is a recipient of multiple European Research Council grants and represents the profile of researcher the paper seeks to empower.

The analysis centres on Horizon Europe, the European Union’s research and innovation programme covering 2021 to 2027. According to the authors, funding within this framework remains fragmented, and discoveries with commercial potential can fall into administrative gaps between two key instruments. European Research Council Proof of Concept grants help researchers explore practical applications of frontier science, while European Innovation Council programmes support technology development and business growth. Between these two stages, promising ideas can lose momentum because the transition requires repeated evaluations, new application procedures and shifts in governance that are difficult for individual researchers and early-stage investors to navigate.

The paper’s flagship proposal is to bring the ERC Proof of Concept grants under European Innovation Council governance, creating a more continuous pathway from scientific discovery to technology development and commercialisation. The authors argue that this restructuring could reduce repeated evaluations, simplify transitions between programmes and make support more predictable for researchers and the investors who back them. Dario Polli, professor at Politecnico di Milano and one of the lead authors of the Policy Forum, frames the problem in terms of lost momentum. Europe, he says, has extraordinary scientific talent, but too often momentum is lost between discovery and application, and what is needed is a more continuous pathway that allows promising ideas to move from fundamental research towards technologies, companies and solutions capable of generating economic and societal impact.

Beyond connecting existing programmes, the Policy Forum calls for substantially stronger support for early-stage, high-risk innovation. The combined annual funding for the European Innovation Council’s Pathfinder and Transition programmes currently stands at approximately 500 million euros, a figure the authors consider modest given the scale of the challenge, while their programme-management capacity remains limited compared with advanced research agencies in the United States. The recommendation is to reallocate resources towards breakthrough innovation and to give independent programme managers greater authority to guide promising projects, an approach inspired by models such as the United States’ ARPA-style agencies, where empowered managers can steer portfolios of risky ideas with flexibility and speed that conventional grant systems rarely allow.

Giorgio Presidente, a researcher at the Institute for European Policymaking at Bocconi University, places the funding critique in a wider economic context. Europe, he argues, is caught in a middle-technology trap: the continent specialises in mature industries such as automotive and industrial machinery, while frontier sectors such as artificial intelligence and biotechnology remain too small. To strengthen competitiveness and strategic autonomy, he contends, Europe must rebuild the pipeline from scientific discovery to market, funding the best ideas and enabling researchers and innovators to turn today’s breakthroughs into tomorrow’s high-tech industries. This framing connects the paper’s technical recommendations on grant governance to the broader political debate about Europe’s productivity and technological sovereignty.

The authors also target the administrative burden of applying for European funding. They propose that applications be shorter and assessed more directly on the substance of the idea and its potential use, rather than on extensive documentation that consumes researchers’ time without improving selection quality. In a further measure aimed at the gap between excellence and capacity, they suggest that national funding agencies make multi-year commitments to support excellent projects that successfully pass European evaluation but cannot be financed from the available European Union budget. This would extend an approach already used through the Seal of Excellence, a quality label that allows national and regional programmes to identify and fund proposals judged excellent at the European level but left unfunded due to budget limits.

A recurring theme of the paper is that Europe does not have a problem with the quality of its research; what it lacks are the conditions for that research to translate more readily into innovation and value for society. The authors argue that supporting researchers should extend beyond generating new knowledge to protecting, developing and transferring it, and that entrepreneurship and technology transfer should be recognised as fully legitimate components of the scientific mission. Ciofani emphasises the institutional dimension of this shift, noting that universities face an opportunity to rethink incentives, skills and career paths, creating an environment in which researchers who choose to turn a discovery into a technology or a new venture are supported rather than penalised in their academic careers.

Reforming European funding alone, the authors stress, will not be sufficient. Universities and technology transfer offices must also create conditions in which researchers can pursue innovation without being forced to choose between an academic career and entrepreneurship. The Policy Forum recommends greater recognition of entrepreneurship in academic careers, improved intellectual-property management and clearer routes to patents, industrial partnerships and spin-offs, together with better access to mentoring and entrepreneurial expertise. These measures address a well-documented cultural problem in European academia, where commercialisation activities have often counted little in hiring, promotion and evaluation, discouraging precisely the researchers best placed to translate frontier science into applications.

The authors are careful to note the limits of their proposals. The reforms would not by themselves resolve Europe’s wider constraints in venture capital, regulation and business expansion, all of which shape whether young companies can scale within the European market. However, they argue that a more coherent system linking scientific research, technology development and entrepreneurship could help Europe capture more of the economic and societal value generated by its research base. Amanda Silva Brun, director of research at the CNRS in France and one of the lead authors, describes the practical vision: clearer institutional pathways with well-defined steps, predictable timelines and streamlined procedures that make the entire process easier to navigate, empowering more researchers to transform knowledge into solutions for society. Embracing innovation, she suggests, can give new momentum to scientific careers, reshape how research is approached and enable scientists to play a strategic role in strengthening Europe’s global competitiveness while addressing unmet societal needs. The Policy Forum, which underwent external peer review and revision before acceptance in Science, is intended as a contribution to ongoing discussions about the design of the next generation of European research and innovation programmes, and its authors hope the perspective of scientists who have themselves attempted the journey from discovery to market will inform how those programmes are built.

Subject of Research: Proposed reforms to European Union research and innovation funding to improve commercialisation of scientific discoveries

Article Title: European researchers set out EU innovation reforms in Science

Article References: European researchers set out EU innovation reforms in Science. (n.d.). Original publication

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: Not provided

Keywords: European Union, Horizon Europe, European Research Council, European Innovation Council, science policy, innovation, technology transfer, academic entrepreneurship, research funding, spin-offs, competitiveness, INPACT!