INSPIRING ERA’s new Policy Brief on Knowledge Valorisation explores how research is translated into economic and societal value across Europe — and what researchers, institutions, Member States and the EU can do to make that process work better.
Europe produces excellent research. But what happens after a new finding, method or technology leaves the laboratory — or the pages of a scientific publication?
Turning research results into something that businesses, public authorities, healthcare providers or communities can actually use is rarely a straightforward process. Researchers may lack time or incentives to pursue practical applications. Companies may not know which research expertise could help them. Technology transfer offices can bridge the gap, but often work with limited capacity. Funding may support research or market deployment, while leaving the crucial stages in between uncovered.
This is the challenge at the heart of Knowledge Valorisation: creating social and economic value from knowledge by connecting research with the actors who can use it.
The new INSPIRING ERA Policy Brief on Knowledge Valorisation is more than an analysis of policy frameworks. It is designed as a practical collection of lessons learned from across Europe, bringing together tangible examples, tested approaches and stakeholder experiences that practitioners can adapt within their own organisations. By combining policy insights with concrete practice, it encourages mutual learning across the European Research Area while identifying what enables Knowledge Valorisation to succeed in different contexts.
The Policy Brief looks at how this works in practice across Europe. Drawing on 24 in-depth interviews with stakeholders in 13 countries and 68 survey responses, it captures recurring barriers, enabling factors and practical approaches from organisations directly involved in bringing research into use. Rather than treating valorisation as an isolated technology transfer task, the report examines the full ecosystem: researchers, potential users, intermediary organisations, national frameworks and European-level instruments.
Awareness is growing. Implementation is still uneven.
The findings reveal an important tension. Knowledge Valorisation is increasingly recognised, but recognition does not always translate into systematic practice.
Among survey respondents, 69% reported being at least somewhat familiar with activities that bring research results into practical use. At organisational level, 53% said Knowledge Valorisation was partly or fully integrated into their organisation’s strategy.
Yet consistent operational integration remains more limited. The survey points to three equally prominent barriers: lack of time and staff capacity, limited funding for early-stage development and low incentives for researchers — each identified by 25% of respondents. Administrative complexity and limited skills and awareness followed, both at 22%.
The message emerging from the evidence is clear: Knowledge Valorisation is not blocked by one missing instrument. The challenges are interconnected and appear at different stages of the journey from research to use.
Where does Knowledge Valorisation get stuck?
The Policy Brief identifies several barriers that repeatedly emerge across European research and innovation systems:
- Researchers need not only skills and incentives, but time to engage. Academic career systems remain strongly centred on publications, while valorisation activities compete with research, teaching and administrative responsibilities. Limited protected time and unclear career incentives can discourage engagement. The survey reinforces this concern: lack of time and staff capacity was one of the three most frequently identified barriers, cited by 25% of respondents. Creating protected time for researchers to explore applications, work with external partners and develop transfer pathways is therefore an important part of making Knowledge Valorisation practically possible. The report also highlights examples such as Masaryk University’s pilot approach, where researchers with external applied-research funding can temporarily focus on transfer work and be exempted from publication requirements for up to two years.
- Potential users of research face capacity constraints of their own. SMEs often work under short-term commercial pressures, while municipalities, public-interest organisations and non-profit actors may lack the internal capacity to identify, adapt or implement research-based solutions. Even where interest exists, practical uptake can fail without guidance, training and implementation support.
- Collaboration often stalls in the “difficult middle”. Initial contact between a researcher and an external partner is only the beginning. Moving from interest to concrete implementation can involve legal questions, intellectual property, funding, project design and different expectations. Intermediaries are critical at this stage — yet 49% of survey respondents described intermediary structures such as TTOs, hubs and clusters as either weak and under-resourced (23.5%) or working but overloaded (25%). Only 9% considered these structures strong and well supported.
- Transfer structures are essential, but frequently overstretched. Effective Knowledge Valorisation requires more than administrative processing. Institutions need proactive scouting, matchmaking, legal and commercial expertise and people able to translate between research and external needs. The capacity gap identified in the survey helps explain why promising collaborations can struggle precisely in the stage where hands-on support is most needed.
- Funding does not always follow the valorisation journey. Stakeholders point to gaps in continuity, particularly during early-stage development. Promising research results may need validation, proof-of-concept work, testing or adaptation before an external user is ready to invest. The scale of this need is also visible in the survey: 41% of respondents identified dedicated early-stage or proof-of-concept funding as the support that would best enable earlier engagement in Knowledge Valorisation.
- Legal uncertainty and administrative complexity create additional friction. State aid questions, differing institutional rules and the absence of standardised approaches to spin-offs and licensing can increase transaction costs and slow collaboration. For actors with limited previous experience, complexity itself can become a barrier to engagement.
- Knowledge Valorisation is still too often understood through patents and spin-offs alone. The Policy Brief strongly argues for a broader understanding of the value research can create, particularly across the Social Sciences and Humanities. Valorisation can take the form of policy advice, consulting, digital tools, services or cooperation with public authorities and civil society. One interviewee gave the example of a theologian providing consulting services to municipalities on the repurposing of church spaces — a small-scale but concrete illustration of how specialised academic knowledge can generate practical economic and societal value beyond traditional technology transfer. As a representative of Slovenia’s Ministry of Higher Education, Science and Innovation put it, Knowledge Valorisation is about “what research gives back to society”.
- European tools exist, but do not always reach everyday practice. Stakeholders generally valued ERA Knowledge Valorisation instruments when they knew them, but the report identifies low awareness, fragmentation and limited operational relevance as barriers to uptake. This points to a need for clearer navigation and more practical guidance connected to institutional routines.
Learning from Practice: Good Practices Across Europe
The Policy Brief does not only identify gaps. It deliberately captures concrete practices that researchers, research managers, technology transfer professionals and policymakers can learn from. Rather than promoting a single model, it demonstrates how different organisations have successfully addressed similar challenges in different national contexts. Across Europe, stakeholders highlighted approaches that are helping research and users find each other — and move from contact to implementation.
In Poland, the Innovation Coach initiative has supported 1,900 companies through coaching by researchers and other research-related experts. The programme helps companies identify where innovation could be implemented, initiate R&D activities and access national and European funding instruments. It demonstrates the value of working directly with potential users to strengthen their capacity to absorb and apply research-based knowledge.
At Vilnius Tech, the Knowledge and Technology Transfer Centre provides an “all-in-one” intermediary model. Its services combine early-stage valorisation support, administrative facilitation, implementation assistance and training for external partners such as municipalities. The centre also provides hands-on support with intellectual property, licensing, patenting and ownership structures. By filling capacity gaps on both sides of a collaboration, the model can help external partners build the experience needed to return with more ambitious projects.
Co-creation is another recurring theme. At the University of Malta, potential value is explored by formulating hypotheses about how a technology could create value and testing them through structured engagement with industry. As Andras Havasi explained, “frequently, initial assumptions prove to be naive.” Real-world feedback allows researchers and partners to adapt, refine or pivot before committing further resources.
The RE-STONE project in Malta shows that successful valorisation can also be a long journey. Research into transforming construction and demolition waste into stone-like materials evolved over approximately a decade, moving through applied research, validation and cooperation before reaching commercial launch. The example illustrates why continuity, persistence and support across different stages of the valorisation lifecycle matter.
Open labs, testbeds and experimentation environments offer another promising pathway. The test-before-invest approach identified in the report is particularly relevant for SMEs and other organisations with limited internal R&D capacity. Testing a research-based solution before making a larger investment can reduce financial and technological risk and create a lower-threshold entry point into collaboration.
These examples differ in design and context. But they share several characteristics: early interaction, practical support, lower barriers to participation and people or structures able to translate between research and user needs. Their real value lies in showing that successful approaches already exist across Europe and can be adapted, refined and scaled rather than recreated from scratch.
From isolated good practices to stronger systems
Based on the stakeholder evidence, INSPIRING ERA sets out recommendations for both the European Commission and Member States. The recommendations reflect the five-level perspective used throughout the analysis and focus on improving the conditions in which Knowledge Valorisation takes place.
Key pathways forward include:
- Give researchers the skills, incentives — and protected time — to engage. At European level, the Policy Brief recommends integrating Knowledge Valorisation more systematically into research career and skills frameworks and promoting early exposure during doctoral and postdoctoral training. Member States are encouraged to reflect valorisation in research assessment and career progression. But the findings also show that recognition alone is not enough: researchers need practical space within their workload to explore applications, cooperate with external partners and pursue transfer activities.
- Create easier entry points for collaboration. EU and national support should enable low-threshold cooperation between research organisations and companies, public authorities, hospitals, municipalities and civil society organisations. Formats such as living labs, pilot environments, test-before-invest schemes and structured co-creation can reduce financial risk and administrative complexity, particularly for first-time users.
- Expand access to experimentation and testing. Shared laboratories, testbeds, demonstration environments and pilot infrastructures can help SMEs, startups and public-sector actors validate solutions under real-world conditions. Infrastructure alone may not be enough: technical guidance, brokerage and support with regulatory or standardisation questions can also be necessary.
- Recognise intermediaries as core implementation actors. With almost half of survey respondents describing intermediary structures as weak, under-resourced or overloaded, strengthening their staff and skills is a practical priority. Brokerage, matchmaking and translation between research capabilities and user needs should be treated as central components of Knowledge Valorisation rather than secondary administrative functions.
- Build continuity across the valorisation lifecycle. Member States should address funding gaps between research, early-stage validation and later implementation. More coherent funding pathways could help prevent promising results from becoming stranded at the point where proof-of-concept work or testing is needed.
- Recognise diverse pathways to value. Knowledge Valorisation frameworks should be relevant not only to patentable technologies and high-growth spin-offs, but also to the Social Sciences and Humanities and to research that creates value through policy advice, public-sector collaboration, consulting, services or societal applications.
- Reduce unnecessary complexity and improve predictability. Clearer regulatory conditions and more standardised approaches to spin-offs and licensing could lower transaction costs. The recommendations also point towards reducing administrative burden and ensuring that support instruments are proportionate to the actors and activities involved.
- Make ERA Knowledge Valorisation instruments easier to use. At European level, the Policy Brief calls for clearer navigation, practical guidance and better coordination across existing instruments. Peer-learning and exchange formats should focus on tested approaches and real implementation challenges rather than abstract policy discussion.
Why this matters for the ERA community
For researchers, better Knowledge Valorisation systems can mean earlier access to support, clearer pathways for developing an idea and greater recognition of work that creates value beyond academic publication. Crucially, they can also mean having the protected time needed to engage in valorisation in practice.
For research organisations and transfer professionals, the findings underline the importance of strategically embedded and adequately resourced support structures. The survey’s capacity figures show that the question is not simply whether a TTO, hub or intermediary exists — but whether it has the staff, skills and mandate to provide meaningful hands-on support.
For companies, municipalities and other users of research, lower-threshold collaboration and experimentation formats can make research capabilities easier to access and reduce the risks of trying something new.
For the Social Sciences and Humanities community, a broader understanding of Knowledge Valorisation can make visible forms of value creation that have often remained outside traditional transfer models.
And for policymakers, the Policy Brief provides an important reminder: having a strategy, framework or instrument in place does not automatically mean it is being used effectively.
This is where the INSPIRING ERA policy feedback loop becomes particularly relevant. By collecting experiences from actors directly involved in implementation, the project translates practical barriers, needs and successful approaches into structured recommendations for the European and national policy levels.
Learning from Each Other: The Next Step for Europe
The evidence gathered for this Policy Brief sends an encouraging message. Europe already has a wealth of successful practices: co-creation formats that involve students and early-career researchers, effective intermediary support models, creative Knowledge Valorisation pathways that extend beyond technology transfer, and institutional innovations such as Masaryk University’s autonomous Transfer Office. The next challenge is therefore not simply to develop new policy frameworks, but to scale these lessons, close remaining institutional and national gaps, and strengthen peer learning so that organisations across Europe can benefit from one another’s experience.
Knowledge Valorisation works as a system — or it gets stuck between systems
The central message of the Policy Brief is not that Europe lacks research, ideas or even good practices. It is that the pathway from knowledge to practical value remains uneven.
Researchers need incentives, skills and protected time. Potential users need accessible ways to engage. Intermediaries need the capacity to guide collaborations through the “difficult middle”. Funding and regulatory frameworks need to support continuity. And European instruments need to be visible, practical and connected to everyday institutional realities.
No single intervention can solve all of these challenges.
But by strengthening the connections between the different parts of the system — and scaling approaches that already work — Europe can create better conditions for research to generate economic and societal value.
