From Lab to Market at the Marie Curie Alumni Association's Conference

At the Marie Curie Alumni Association (MCAA) Annual Conference 2026, Elegnano founder, Katrien Herdewyn, joined Elena Martines and Paul Killeen from the European Commission, to discuss the transition from bringing highly technical products from lab to market - a journey that kills most deep tech startups before they even get started. The session focused on the realities of scaling innovation, the potential advantages of the EU Inc initiative for deep tech startups, and sharing lessons learned from Elegnano's journey.

Below a short summary of those lessons learned from the panel discussion.

The Valley of Death: Surviving TRL 3 to 6 on your way from lab to market

The gap between a lab prototype (TRL 3) and a market-ready product (TRL 6) is where most deep tech startups die. This phase is typically defined by uncertainty, resource constraints, and the tension between perfecting the science and building a business. There’s no magic formula, instead there is relentless problem-solving, strategic pivots, looking for capital, and the willingness to accept that not everything can be controlled - but your spending definitely should be.

To make it even harder: Technology Readiness Levels (TRL) are necessary, but not sufficient. At some point, you have to stop optimizing the tech and start asking: Who needs this? How do we get it to them? And how do we build a business around it?  That shift - from TRL to Business Readiness (BRL) - is where many researchers stumble. Just because a technology works and scales, doesn't mean the market is interested or ready. Many innovations go to die because they were developed in a silo or echo chamber of likeminded (technical) people, losing sight of how the pain point you're addressing is already solved today.

The Alternative Route

Alternative paths exist when traditional routes, like grants and VC funding don’t align with your vision or timeline:

• Focusing on impact, not milestones. Titles and funding rounds don’t matter if the core problem isn’t being solved. A whole graveyard of technology startups that went to die after millions of funding, should be enough proof that just because you get funded, doesn't mean you created something that will sell. Especially in deep tech/hardware: Keep questioning the longterm business plan and market research, because the path to commercialization is expensive and you don't want to hit all your milestones, only to find out that the market isn't ready for your innovation.

• Transparency and Collaboration. Build with purpose. Transparency and collaboration accelerate progress. Think outside the box. What part of the ecosystem for your innovation to thrive, do you need to own, protect, support, regulate, or collaborate on?

• Embracing friction. Bureaucracy, legal hurdles, and market skepticism aren’t going away. The question is: How do you navigate them without losing momentum? The EU Inc. initiative is created to remove some barriers. For startups who plan to raise money and hire across Europe, EU Inc promises to simplify and streamline the process. However, even if you don't plan on being VC funded, an EU Inc can still be for your startup, showing international ambition and credibility with foreign suppliers.

  
  

The One Skill No Researcher Can Afford to Ignore

If I could give researchers with a market-ready prototype one piece of advice, it wouldn’t be about patents, pitch decks, or pilot projects. It would be: Learn to communicate why your work matters. Not in jargon, not in technical specs, but in a way that connects with the people who can help you scale it. Whether you are pitching to an investor, trying to sell your product to a client, or communicating with suppliers, partners, employees, policymakers, or other stakeholders, understanding who they are and what successful communication for them looks like, matters. I see too many technical founders struggle because they assume what they find important will be important to everyone else as well.

There’s no universal roadmap for commercializing deep tech.  Sometimes, the most valuable lessons come from the detours.