As part of the Security Mission Information & Innovation Group (SMI2G) event, held on 23–24 April 2026 at the Conseil régional d’Île-de-France, Paris, France, the panel discussion “From Innovation to Market” brought together panellists who shared their experience in research and innovation activities, with a focus on innovation uptake.
ENACT’s André Alegria was part of the panel alongside Serena Bianchi of SYNYO, Nelson Fernandes of PhotonSense, Alessia Melasecche Germini of META Group and representing the Horizon Results Booster, Olivier Salvi coordinator of the DIREKTION network, and Katrin Widen of THW Germany. The panel was moderated by Jeannette Klonk the NCP of Austria for Cluster 3, and Marco Manso of PARTICLE summary.
The key messages from the panel and the white paper include
The key messages and insights are aligned many of ENACT’s objectives and findings throughout the past three years:
- Europe’s security innovation challenge needs to focus on ensuring that promising results reach operational use.
- End users must be sufficiently engaged across the innovation cycle – taking their place as genuine co-creators from design to deployment
- A clear pathway through to procurement must be established, with fewer chances for promising results to fall through the cracks between funding calls, timelines and procedures
- More support for SMEs is needed to overcome regulatory challenges and access to operational testing environments
- Social sciences and humanities research and expertise are essential to appropriately address security challenges
Ultimately, innovations need to focus on more than just technical maturity for operational uptake – all of the above factors need to be incorporated into the project lifecycle to maximise the chance for success
Read the paper to find out more – https://zenodo.org/records/21804934