Luxembourg will host the inaugural edition of the Deeptech Venture Summit on September 19th and 20th. Organised by Technoport, this event aims to define a strategy and foster collaborations at both national and international levels, positioning Luxembourg as a center of excellence in transformative technologies within Europe. Interview of Olivier Zephir, Head of Business Development and Innovation at Technoport.
What motivated the creation of the DeepTech Ventures Summit in Luxembourg?
As a technology business incubator, we continuously observe the development of startups across emerging domains. One of the dynamic entrepreneurial areas which is continuously nurturing a significant number of young ambitious companies and leveraging related investments is the deeptech sector.
Our mission at Technoport is to consolidate the effective resources and partners to support entrepreneurial initiatives across emerging deeptech domains. By organising the DeepTech Ventures Summit in Luxembourg our objective is to question the competitiveness of the Luxembourgish deeptech ecosystem and collaboratively work on those areas of improvement that will be discussed during the summit.
How do you define deeptech, and why do you believe it’s a crucial focus for Luxembourg’s future innovation landscape?
The fundamental base of deeptech is scientific findings enabling technical and engineering breakthroughs. Deeptech leverages novel technologies to address substantial environmental, human, or industrial challenges and is characterized by uncertain R&D cycles that redefine established models.
Deeptech ventures are technology businesses originating from private and public research labs, SMEs, and startup companies who have converted high-tech research and development activities into a product.
These ventures underly different dynamics than traditional innovative startups, in terms of funding requirements, product/market fit validation timings and growth opportunities. We believe Luxembourg can develop some unique deeptech framework conditions so as to play an active role in the fast moving EU deeptech scene.
What key insights will participants gain about building an integrated deep tech venture ecosystem?
The key insights will be about ecosystem alignment and collaborations for maturing effective lab to market development strategies. The set of 8 panel sessions will address through different speakers and use cases how deeptech enablers are designed, operated and steered.
Enablers such as science and technical resources, public and private financial capabilities, IP strategies as well as entrepreneurial talents accessibility. The DeepTech Ventures Summit will be the opportunity to discover some best practices of foreign deeptech ecosystems such as Belgium, France, Italy and Spain.
How do you see the summit’s role evolving in supporting deep tech ventures in Luxembourg and the EU?
The DeepTech Ventures Summit aims to be “the local to global” meeting point where technology entrepreneurial stakeholders converge to redefine the boundaries of lab to market opportunities.
The scope is to collaboratively define, as a local ecosystem, the practical means to engage transformative technology development with international parties and to pioneer strategies that will trigger global deeptech business development of tomorrow.
Special offer for Startup Luxembourg's readers: If you buy an Early Bird Ticket for the whole event, the Technoport Cosmic Party is free for you with the promo code DTVStartupLuxembourg. Benefit from it here.
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