Ideation: Killing flawed concepts early (TRL 2–3)

Innovation pipelines often fail because they scale the wrong ideas. Ideathons should not be generic brainstorming sessions; they are structured pressure tests where operational users, engineers and commercial innovators challenge assumptions before significant development resources are committed.

Whether the need is a satellite-based Earth Observation service, autonomous logistics or secure communications, the goal at TRL 2–3 is to translate a capability gap into a clear and actionable technical problem. By forcing participants to defend the logic, viability, and operational impact of their concepts before a single line of code is written, we eliminate unfeasible projects early. This ensures engineering hours are spent only on solutions anchored in mission reality.

The journey begins at the earliest stages of the innovation cycle where capability needs are translated into tangible opportunities. Ideathons serve as the primary vehicle for this transformation, engaging a diverse group of stakeholders in structured creative exercises. Unlike purely technical sprints, these formats prioritize logic, impact, and viability, helping to clarify complex problem spaces and challenge initial assumptions. By focusing on TRL 2 to 3, Ideathons ensure that subsequent engineering efforts are anchored in a shared understanding of the mission, effectively reducing the risk of developing “technologically sound” solutions that fail to address real-world operational priorities.

Hackathons: Forcing prototype-first learning (TRL 3–5)

Concepts that look convincing on slides often fail when connected to real systems. Hackathons create rapid prototype-first learning, forcing teams to build functional demonstrators in days rather than months. At TRL 3 to 5 then, the focus shifts to proving technical feasibility under tight deadlines.

This high-pressure environment exposes integration challenges, data bottlenecks and technical constraints early, generating evidence about what works before larger procurement decisions are made.

Wargaming: Stress-testing tech in simulated conflict

An isolated technical success in a clean laboratory means nothing if it cannot survive a contested environment. Before a technology advances, it must be subjected to the chaos of a simulated battlefield.

Wargaming acts as an operational stress test. By embedding prototypes into realistic scenarios, organizations can identify hidden dependencies, communications vulnerabilities and integration gaps before deployment. The objective is not only to validate performance, but also to reveal where a technology must be hardened to operate reliably in complex defense or space missions.

Competitions: Evidence-based selection

When multiple technical pathways exist, the ecosystem must pivot from exploration to strict prioritization. Competitions and challenges introduce standardized, data-driven benchmarks to separate viable vendors from hype.

By evaluating solutions side-by-side under identical criteria, they can generate comparable data on robustness, accuracy, and readiness. This objective filtering ensures that scarce funding, range time, and procurement resources are reserved strictly for the highest-performing technologies. It also uncovers early regulatory and security gaps that could derail future deployment.

Sandboxing: Solving the integration bottleneck

Moving a prototype out of a short-term sprint and into a formal defense program is where most innovations die. Sandboxing provides the mandatory methodological bridge.

This is not another open-ended test; it is a rigorous diagnostic exercise. Winners from previous phases are given access to representative physical or digital defense infrastructures. Operating under strict constraints – such as network segregation, classification limits, and strict interoperability standards – we use clear ‘compliance & gap sheets’ to determine exactly what it will take to make the technology procurement-ready.

Scaling: Breaking into the defense supply chain

The final step is connecting validated non-traditional innovators with the institutional buyers and Prime contractors who can scale production.

Start-up Conferences and Demonstration Days are treated as high-value matchmaking interfaces, not PR events. Startups present verified data to investors and Large System Integrators (LSIs) to secure capital and integration pathways. Concurrently, targeted delegation visits elevate the most strategic dual-use technologies directly into international policy and tactical procurement discussions, ensuring long-term sovereign adoption.

Engineering the pipeline at Verhaert Strategic Innovation

Verhaert Strategic Innovation acts as the practical interface between commercial tech frontiers and sovereign defense requirements. We don’t just consult; we build and operate the infrastructure required to navigate high-entry-barrier markets.

We de-risk the innovation journey through three operational pillars:

• Strategic sourcing: We translate complex military capability gaps into technology-agnostic challenges that commercial startups can actually understand and build for.
• Managed innovation programs: Utilizing our structured Innovation Management Grid (IMG), we run end-to-end acceleration pipelines, such as the CASSINI Business Accelerator and the Belgian Innovation as a Service (IaaS) framework, taking concepts from TRL 2 to battlefield-ready TRL 6+ prototypes.
• Compliance & scale-up support: A technology is useless if it cannot legally be bought. We guide dual-use companies through the complexities of Internal Compliance Programs (ICPs), export controls, and security clearances, making commercial software and hardware fully procurement-ready for European defense.

We ensure that concepts like the ‘Battlefield of Things’ and ‘New Space’ are translated into durable, deployable capabilities that secure European strategic autonomy.

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The logical case for integrated requirements

Strategic sourcing in a dual-use context is a delicate balancing act. You aren’t just buying parts; you are buying compliance, resilience, and scalability. An integrated requirements approach supports strategic sourcing in several ways:

• Sovereign reliability: Defense-grade sourcing requires ‘trusted foundries’ and friend-shoring, while commercial sourcing thrives on global cost optimization. Requirements should make it clear when each sourcing approach applies.
• Component commonality: Identifying components that can be shared across commercial and defense variants helps increase purchasing volumes and reduce overall costs. Without precise definitions up front, engineering will naturally ‘over-spec’ the civilian part, killing its market competitiveness.
• Lifecycle traceability: Dual-use contracts often require a ‘digital birth certificate’ for every component. Sourcing must define these data requirements early, or you’ll face a manual auditing nightmare later.
• Regulatory readiness: Sourcing must anticipate changes in ITAR (International Traffic in Arms Regulations) or EAR (Export Administration Regulations) status before the first purchase order is issued. 

Sourcing meets the ‘wall of silence’

Many sourcing challenges in dual-use development do not stem from supplier performance. They arise because procurement and engineering interpret requirements differently.

A commercial component may satisfy functional specifications yet lack the documentation required for defense qualification. Environmental requirements such as vibration, temperature range or electromagnetic compatibility may appear late in development, forcing costly supplier changes or requalification activities.

Cybersecurity presents another common example. If software assurance and supply-chain security are introduced only during compliance reviews, sourcing options become significantly more limited than they would have been if those requirements had guided supplier selection from the beginning.

The earlier these discussions happen, the more options remain available.

This early alignment is also reflected in collaborative initiatives such as the XR Labs, where companies, researchers, public authorities and end users use immersive technologies to co-design, test and validate dual-use solutions before they reach deployment. By refining requirements in realistic operational scenarios before supplier selection begins, organizations can make more informed sourcing decisions while reducing costly redesigns later in development.

The modular power-grid pilot

Consider a company developing portable microgrids for both disaster relief operations and military deployments.

By using an integrated requirements management tool, the sourcing team identified that 85% of the internal components could be dual-tracked. They defined a core requirement set that met 90% of defense ruggedization standards but remained cost-effective enough for civilian NGOs.

For the remaining 15% (the specialized, encrypted communications modules), they designed a plug-and-play architecture. This allowed them to use a standard, global supply chain for the main chassis while reserving hyper-secure ‘strategic sourcing’ exclusively for the sensitive modules.

The result: a 30% reduction in total COGS (Cost of Goods Sold) compared to building two entirely separate products.

A practical framework for sourcing decisions

To master strategic sourcing, you must manage and balance requirements across three distinct layers of the supply chain:

Looking ahead sourcing intelligence

Dual-use sourcing is becoming less about finding the lowest-cost supplier and more about building supply chains that remain adaptable as technologies, regulations and geopolitical conditions evolve.

That starts with requirements.

When sourcing, engineering and compliance teams establish a shared understanding of what the product needs to achieve – and why – they create far more flexibility later in development. The result is not only a more resilient supply chain, but also a product that can serve both commercial and defense markets without carrying unnecessary cost or complexity.

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Why industrialization is the strategic move for dual-use innovation

The industrialization of dual-use innovation creates a unique ‘flywheel effect’, one chain reaction that strengthens the balance sheet and national resilience together.

Transitioning from ‘hand-built’ to automated production lines drives the marginal cost down, making defense-grade technology viable for mass-market commercial adoption. That broader commercial base is what justifies investing in a more resilient supply chain. Industrialization forces the transition from ‘fragile’ specialized components to standardized and resilient sourcing that can withstand global shocks.

A standardized supply chain, in turn, is what makes the R&D math work. Development costs for dual-use platforms are steep, but scale allows amortization to be spread across high-volume commercial sales and high-reliability government contracts at once.

And finally, industrialization is what makes ‘software-defined hardware’ more than a slogan. A standardized fleet can actually receive software updates in real time. A collection of bespoke one-offs can’t be upgraded at scale, no matter how much R&D goes into it.

Dual-use innovation often stalls at the factory gate

It’s rarely the underlying technology that fails. It’s the absence of what can be called ‘industrial DNA’, the operational instincts that let a product go from clever to manufacturable.

Three patterns repeat themselves:

• The bespoke trap: Designing products that require artisan-level assembly, making it impossible to ramp up production when a major contract lands.
• Regulatory misalignment: Failing to build ‘compliance by design’, leading to commercial products that cannot meet defense security standards, or vice versa.
• Process immaturity: A focus on the product rather than the process of making the product, leading to inconsistent quality and unpredictable lead times.

The proof: Scaling autonomous logistics

Consider the evolution of autonomous Last-Mile Delivery (LMD) drones. Initially developed for specialized commercial delivery, these systems have immense dual-use potential for medical resupply in contested environments.

By industrializing the core platform, a leading manufacturer moved from building 10 units a month to 1,000. They achieved this by using modular chassis designs. In the morning, the line produces ‘commercial’ units optimized for weight and cost. In the afternoon, the same line produces ‘hardened’ versions with encrypted comms and ruggedized sensors.

This industrial synergy ensures that the defense sector gets cutting-edge tech at commercial speeds, while the commercial sector benefits from the extreme reliability required by defense standards.

The result is a manufacturing platform that serves both commercial and defense markets without maintaining two entirely separate production ecosystems.

The industrialization framework for dual-use innovation

Industrializing a dual-use product means that leadership needs to align four dimensions of the business model at once.

None of these is a one-off project you finish and move past. They’re operating disciplines that have to mature together because a certification strategy without a matching manufacturing strategy is just paperwork.

The next step to industrial leadership

Industrialization is ultimately what transforms promising technology into deployable capability. Organizations that design for manufacturability, certification, supply chain resilience and production readiness from the outset are better positioned to scale across both commercial and defense markets.

If there’s one shift worth internalizing, it’s this: your production floor is not support infrastructure for the innovation. It is the innovation, once you’re past the prototype stage. The code, the sensors, the materials science, all of it depends on whether you can actually build the thing at scale, to spec, twice a day, every day.

Wondering whether your platform is ready to move beyond the prototype stage? We’d be glad to walk through a Production Readiness Review with you, a practical way to assess your industrial readiness and identify where your manufacturing strategy, processes and supply chain can be strengthened before a major contract puts them to the test.

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Space and defense are no longer reserved for governments. Across Europe, dual-use technologies are blurring civilian and defense applications, opening new ground for innovation that boosts resilience, autonomy and agility. This track shows how Europe can shift from large, closed systems to small, distributed, intelligent ones that guide complex operations, enable unmanned missions and deliver real-time insights. We’ll highlight how advanced optics, robotics, AI and system engineering transform defense operations — and how open innovation platforms, from incubators to sandboxes, let start-ups and established players co-create disruptive capabilities and accelerate Europe’s next generation of space and defense capacity. Check out the presentations from the Innovation Day of 2024 on:

• Dual-use tech & components: From lab to market with an entrepreneurial mindset
  By Florent Passalacqua, Innovation Consultant at Verhaert Strategic Innovation and Manu Pepermans, Project Manager at Verhaert Product Innovation
• Building distributed intelligent systems with edge AI
  By Klaas Hofman, Software Tech Lead EmbeddedLab at Verhaert Product Innovation and Niels Verleysen, AI Engineer at Verhaert Digital Innovation
• The agility accelerator: Reinventing innovation for space and defense
  By Dany Robberecht, Business Unit Director at Verhaert Strategic Innovation

View the presentation

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As Europe faces complex security challenges and increasing global competition, dual-use innovation has become more crucial than ever. From cybersecurity to advanced materials and AI-powered defense systems, the technologies we develop today must serve both civil society and national security interests. Verhaert Strategic Innovation, part of the Verhaert Group, will host and lead the program’s ‘Dual-Use Technologies for Civil and Security Applications’ track, known as Evolve DualTech, helping researchers transform promising innovations into market-ready solutions that serve both civilian and security needs.

Bridging Europe’s research-to-market gap

Despite Europe’s globally recognized leadership in scientific output, the continent continues to face significant challenges in translating research into commercial success. The SPIN: Rise program aims to tackle this issue by providing researchers with targeted entrepreneurial training, strategic coaching and access to innovation ecosystems that can help bring cutting-edge technologies to market.

The Evolve DualTech track is led by experienced consultants and innovation experts from Verhaert Strategic Innovation, alongside external keynote speakers and mentors. With decades of expertise in dual-use technologies, product development and early-stage commercialization, the Verhaert team offers participants practical guidance, strategic insight and real-world know-how.

“At Verhaert, we believe that innovation is only as valuable as its ability to create real-world impact,” says Eleni Anastasopoulou, Project Manager of the Evolve DualTech program at Verhaert Strategic Innovation. “As Europe strengthens its strategic autonomy through initiatives such as the ReArm Europe Plan, dual-use technologies that serve both civil and security applications have become increasingly essential. Our program is designed to empower researchers to bridge the gap between academic excellence and market application, ensuring their work translates into tangible solutions for society.”

A unique focus on dual-use innovation

The Evolve DualTech track offers a dedicated pathway for researchers developing dual-use technologies. These are innovations that hold potential for both civilian markets and security or defense applications. The track combines:

• A seven-week online training and mentoring phase covering intellectual property strategies, business model design, market validation and early-stage investment readiness.
• An immersive three-day in-person bootcamp in Brussels, where participants will engage with industry experts, investors and peers to refine their commercialization strategies.

The initiative is open to researchers at all stages of their careers, including PhD candidates and postdoctoral fellows, with no prior entrepreneurial experience required.

Part of a broader European effort

Within the SPIN: Rise program, the Evolve DualTech track is one of four specialized technology domains alongside:

• Smart manufacturing and digital factories led by Bocconi University (Milan)
• Digital health and AI-driven wellbeing led by Applejack Lab, Instituto Pedro Nunes, and PitchBob.io (Lisbon)
• Cyber-resilient societies and trustworthy AI led by SIBB (Berlin)

The SPIN: Rise program builds on the success of SPIN: Explore, which engaged over 100 researchers from 29 countries with a strong focus on inclusion and gender diversity.

“European research excellence is world class, but we continue to face challenges in translating scientific breakthroughs into market success,” says Federico Menna, CEO of EIT Digital. “SPIN: Rise addresses this critical gap by equipping researchers with practical tools to navigate commercialization.”

Applications open until mid-September 2025

Researchers and innovators interested in bringing their dual-use technologies to market are encouraged to apply before September 15th. The Evolve DualTech program will officially kick off in October 2025. 

For more information and to submit applications, please visit: Evolve DualTech Track.

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