Why Start-Ups Are Not Getting Customers: An Investigation to the Commercialization Capabilities of Start-Ups

EU start-ups have excellent track records where fundamental research and R&D spending are concerned, but lag behind in “converting this strength into wealth-generating innovations”. Research shows that technology is not the bottleneck for this so-called ‘European paradox’, but rather the limited attention for and investments in commercializing the innovation. Indeed, start-ups lack investments in customer development and sales. Having burned up their resources long before they are able to identify and talk to customers, start-ups often fail to link to and learn from customers and discover their markets. In this project, we will use big-data and data science techniques to investigate how start-up firms can commercialize their innovations more successfully.

Proposal for Eurotech postdoc with a budget of 140,000 Euros cleared the threshold and was waitlisted. The proposal was submitted in 2020 and the topic was related to commercialisation of EU start-ups and the idea was to hire a post-doc with the funding.