Luminspino Client on Its Way to Scaleup Breakthrough Innovation through EIC Accelerator
A Romanian company had a vision to create a better world where, ideally, the presence of fire and the absence of water no longer generate natural disasters.
The Challenge
Co-founded by two partners with an outstanding background in engineering and management, and an unwavering passion for environment-related research and development, the team brings breakthrough innovative products to the market: a fire retardant with unrivaled performance, and a plant treatment for drought-affected lands.
Given the two chemical products’ uniqueness, high degree of novelty, and potential to reverse climate change impacts on the environment and society, we realized that the company was facing a double challenge: to complete the research, while at the same time to scale on the global market.
Our Approach
Due to the specific setup the company was operating in— scope of the breakthrough innovation, technology stage, timing, market creation opportunity, matching of resources, overall complexity and risk of the deployment—Luminspino advised that the optimal fit would be to enter the competition for the European Innovation Council Accelerator funding. Despite being aware of the highly competitive nature of the call for proposals at European Union level, our client was extremely eager to venture into this endeavor.
The Luminspino team implemented a set of services specific to one of our areas of expertise called “Proposal Writing”, closely following the requirements of the EIC Accelerator call for projects, managed directly by the European Commission in Bruxelles:
- Innovation diagnostic to understand key elements of the innovation, such as the problems addressed by the provided solutions, the status of the intellectual protection, the technology and market readiness of the products, the level of the company’s ambition in terms of innovation;
- Weekly structured discussions with the CEO and his team facilitated by Luminspino with the aim to dive deep into all the information and experience available, to propose and validate the best approach to develop a winning proposal for the EIC Accelerator;
- Data collection and processing to build the case of the client company around essential topics, such as market size, competitors, or financial forecasts;
- Writing and development of the complete Project, Pitch deck and script for presentation video, all these being part of the EIC Accelerator online application requirements.
The first ingredient to successfully delivering the solution was the readiness of the company’s management to commit to such an ambitious project. This process implied a lot of time and energy, constant communication and the ability to respond to quick demands from our consulting during the entire process.
The other ingredient was Luminspino’s ability to use its experience in innovation, business, scaling and internationalisation support, and bring it together in the right mix for this particular project. We engaged knowledge and skills, thus constructing organically a unique intervention logic for this particular radical innovation. Additionally, we viewed our consulting work beyond just the scope of the project and, at the time when it was needed, we brought additional advisory support, for example in defining the business model, the value chain or key aspects of the innovation strategy.
Next Steps
At this particular moment, success means that the company won the first step evaluation at the EIC Accelerator, the most competitive European call for breakthrough and deep-tech innovation projects. This qualifies the company for the step two proposal, to be submitted in October 2021, and potentially leading to accessing the funding for further research, market entry and scaling.
“Thirst for knowledge” and “openness to new experiences” are the first things that come to mind when I think of Ms. Raluca Cibu and Luminspino. She analyzes in-depth, convinces with high methodical competence and interprets the results holistically, conclusively and fact-based. Ms. Raluca Cibu can quickly familiarize herself with new industries, is an attentive listener, works quickly and guides each of her projects to a successful conclusion with her many years of expertise.”, said the founder and CEO.