Why optical performance is mission-critical

Earth Observation satellites play critical roles in understanding our planet. High-resolution imagery informs climate research, precision agriculture, disaster management and security applications. The quality of the data they collect depends directly on the performance of the optical system: higher resolution and better sensitivity translate into more actionable insights. Achieving this performance in compact, lightweight payloads is not just an engineering challenge; it determines whether a mission can deliver meaningful results within constraints.

Navigating the complexity of miniaturized systems

Designing optics for space requires balancing competing priorities. Compact instruments must preserve optical performance, maintain alignment under launch vibrations, and survive harsh orbital environments. This involves developing custom optical architectures that maximize resolution and sensitivity without exceeding SWaP limits. Precision engineering, careful material selection and manufacturing are essential to achieve uncompromised alignment, stability and durability in these confined spaces.

Beyond technical precision, understanding the mission context – whether multi- or hyperspectral imaging – is essential to optimize optics for each application. By applying deep application know-how, optical systems can be tailored to maximize performance for each mission’s objectives, ensuring that every photon captured contributes to actionable insights.

From concept to ready-to-fly payloads

Innovation in EO optics does not stop at design. Achieving mission success requires rigorous testing, qualification and verification under realistic conditions. Tailor-made optical systems can be delivered as ready-to-fly payloads, engineered to withstand launch stress, thermal cycling and orbital radiation, while consistently delivering the high-resolution and high-sensitivity performance that critical EO missions demand. By integrating design, manufacturing and mission know-how, these payloads ensure that compact satellites can generate insights that were previously possible only with larger platforms.

The future of Earth Observation

As satellite constellations expand and demands for rapid, actionable insights grow, precision optical engineering will remain the key differentiator that turns miniaturized instruments into mission-critical tools for monitoring and protecting our planet.

Compact, high-performance EO payloads are no longer a compromise between size and capability. By designing custom optical architectures, ensuring precise manufacturing, and optimizing systems for specific applications, satellite missions can achieve sharper insights from smaller, more cost-efficient platforms.

Tailor-made optics unlock the potential of next-generation Earth Observation. Bring tailor-made optics into your next mission and turn your compact EO concepts into high-performance optical systems! Talk to our high-tech experts and start your project today.

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AI for edge computing in Earth Observation

With satellites increasingly generating data, AI-powered edge computing is set to change the game. Instead of sending everything back to Earth for processing, satellites equipped with onboard AI can analyze data in real time, reducing delays and enabling faster decision-making.

This means that industries relying on Earth Observation (EO), like environmental monitoring, agriculture, and disaster response, can get quicker, more actionable insights. To make this a reality highly-precise and reliable optical systems are key to ensuring accurate data interpretation.

The growing merger of defense and space goals

The lines between commercial space activities and defense applications are blurring, as securing space assets becomes just as critical as securing territories on Earth. This shift drives new collaborations and accelerates advancements in surveillance, secure communications, and threat detection technologies.

As defense strategies progressively rely on space-based assets, the demand for high-performance optical systems and precision imaging solutions is escalating. Expertise in space-based space situational awareness (SBSSA) is becoming extremely important.

Expand sensing capabilities with thermal infrared imagery

In several civilian and military applications, thermal infrared imaging is gaining momentum. By capturing temperature-based imaging, this technology plays a critical role in wildfire detection, infrastructure monitoring, and military reconnaissance.

As high-sensitivity thermal imaging advances, the need for specialized optical systems that deliver accuracy in extreme conditions—whether for night-time surveillance or environmental monitoring—continues to pose a key challenge.

Space debris tracking to safeguard the future of orbital operations

The surge in satellite launches has led to an increasing risk of space debris collisions. AI-driven monitoring and optical tracking systems are becoming essential to tackle this growing threat.

Protecting vital space assets requires precise debris-tracking capabilities. High-resolution optical payloads enhance real-time monitoring, helping both commercial satellite operators and government agencies maintain safer orbital paths.

Translate data into actionable strategies

Space-Comm 2025 made one thing clear: the future of space operations depends on advanced imaging, onboard AI, and robust space situational awareness.

At Lambda-X | Verhaert High-Tech, we collaborate with industry leaders to develop high-performance optical systems that meet their most demanding needs and standards. Our optics serve as key components to enhance real-time Earth Observation, strengthen defense applications, and improve space safety. By pushing the boundaries of optical engineering, we’re contributing to building a more secure, high-tech, and data-driven space ecosystem.

Ready to explore how optical innovation can advance your space projects? Let’s talk!

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A game-changer for environmental monitoring

IR imagery is a cornerstone for tackling environmental risks on Earth. In agriculture, it enhances precision farming, identifying specific areas that need intervention to optimize water, fertilizers, and pest control. This minimizes resource waste while enhancing yields. Water resource management also benefits, as infrared sensors detect thermal variations to monitor aquatic ecosystems and track water stress in natural or agricultural landscapes, using both experimental data and the latest generation of science modeling. 

For environmental protection, infrared imaging is key in deforestation monitoring and forest fire prevention, identifying at-risk vegetation and illegal activities to safeguard biodiversity. It also plays a pivotal role in energy efficiency, where thermal imaging highlights building heat loss or defects in solar panels, boosting renewable energy output.

Expanding boundaries in space

In the space and defense sector, infrared imagery extends its utility to Space Situational Awareness (SSA). It enables detection and tracking of objects in orbit, even when in Earth’s shadow, distinguishing between satellites, debris, or potential threats. This same technology supports planetary defense, identifying Near-Earth Objects (NEOs) to mitigate potential impacts.

However, deploying infrared imagery for Earth Observation (EO) in space presents unique challenges. The vision system must maintain performance within the operational thermal range, typically from -40°C to +70°C, while also withstanding the mechanical stress of the launch phase. Additionally, radiation exposure must be factored into the design of electronic components, along with the payload’s transmission budget. 

Ensuring the reliability of these instruments requires a careful study. In parallel, integrating this type of sensor into a constellation of satellites brings additional and severe constraints on both development time and recurring costs.

Beyond hardware, into insights

Yet, as these applications expand, the challenge is to draw valuable conclusions out of the captured thermal data. As demands for enhanced optical systems grow, combining hardware development with AI will undoubtedly create scope for more possibilities. Infrared sensors generate vast datasets, but extracting actionable insights requires advanced data processing, algorithmic analysis, deep machine learning, and, possibly, the combination with other data sources. The door is open to analyzing possible links between datasets that have not yet been combined to identify correlations and even causalities.

Apart from enhancing valuable insights by analyzing existing data smarter, AI can also address challenges like:

• Data-driven optimization, reducing dependency on costly hardware improvements by refining imaging quality through algorithmic advancements.
• Thermal compensation and analysis, providing innovative solutions to optimize design processes, and balancing optical and mechanical needs.
• In space, possibility to enhance the sensor’s spatial resolution and reduce the payload sensitivity to operational thermal environments.

This integration could reduce costs, enhance performance, and open doors to reusability. This is about smarter systems delivering sustainable and high-impact solutions.

Capturing new possibilities

Combining infrared imaging with AI might create synergies that deliver value beyond their current applications. The possibilities are vast, from enhancing image quality to analyzing combined data that have not yet been analyzed in combination. By unblurring the world through these technologies, we enhance imaging and shape a more efficient, sustainable, and innovative future.

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How can you unlock your full space exploration potential?

The potential benefits of space exploration are immense for both the space industry and commercial applications. From climate and environmental protection to space tourism, there’s no shortage of future opportunities for those who are willing to take the leap. However, the high costs associated with space innovation make it a challenging industry to succeed in. During this webinar, you’ll gain insights from industry experts at CNES, 3D Plus, DELTATEC and Lambda-X and gain knowledge on how companies can find new and innovative ways to reduce costs and increase efficiency.

What can you expect?

The possibilities for space exploration are truly awe-inspiring, Serena Bolis, Chief Technical Officer at Lambda-X will share its vision for the exploration of Mars, Jupiter, and the Moon, such as the JUICE mission launched by ESA. Serena will focus on the challenges in developing cutting-edge optical solutions to enable space innovation in the near future.

NewSpace needs disruptive solutions. Small satellites and NewSpace demand lower-cost electronics and higher processing capacity. Julien Nuttin, Head of Hardware and Eric Callut, Senior Project Manager at DELTATEC, will present hybrid electronics and compare it to classical and NewSpace hardware, showcasing how earth and sun observation satellites’ camera electronics benefit from high-performance computing components like FPGA, enhancing reliability and cutting costs.

Next, Julien Bézine, Space Cameras Product Manager at 3D PLUS, will highlight how new miniaturized camera heads will improve space exploration and how to focus on reducing the constraints faced during the development process.

Last but not least, Valerian Lalucaa, Detection Chain Specialist at CNES, will inspire you with its rich history of numerous CNES missions and an outlook of the future which captures HD-color images providing exclusive geographic data.

The ‘ReThinking SpaceTech’ webinar took place on June 13th. Stay tuned for the recordings to take a deeper look into innovation and disruptive technologies which will change the future of space exploration.

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Trends in NewSpace

What is going on that makes earth observation suddenly so accessible? In NewSpace we see that the satellites have become relatively small. Decreasing the material cost and the cost of bringing them into orbit.  This makes it easier for companies to have a presence in space. There has also been a shift from single expensive satellites to constellations of satellites. These consist of duplicates of a satellite that are spread across the globe to increase coverage and reduce costs. Think of a famous billionaire whose space company is doing just that.

In short, companies can now also acquire earth observation data. Aside from using data themselves, they also gain revenue by selling it. This trend of earth observation data being commercially available has truly made earth observation accessible to everyone. By paying a subscription fee, anyone could acquire a monthly quote of data. There even exist platforms where you can get earth observation for free! You are certainly familiar with Google Earth, one such provider of free earth observation data. As you can see, acquiring data has become quite easy. But what makes it so valuable?

What can I do with earth observation data?

The most important thing you can do with this data is to automate the generation of insights. It doesn’t matter if you are a shipping company managing a fleet, an energy company forecasting energy demands, or a farmer wanting a continuous overview of all your crops. You won’t be doing this manually. As the scale of these tasks has become so large, you need to automate this process as much as you can. This is where AI comes in.

As the world gets more globalized, and all our human endeavors scale, automating the generation of insights becomes mandatory in order to not fall behind.

A maritime shipping company might gain insights into how busy certain routes are, how the weather and sea are behaving, or what the ice formations in the arctic look like. A farmer could gain insights into the status of crops. Think not only of the health and readiness to harvest, but the yields as well. To give a few examples you might already have an idea for an application that will generate a lot of value for you. But first of all you will need data, and not just any data, you need the right data. What kind of sensors do you need? You have a lot of options to choose from, from selecting specific spectral bands to LiDAR and other types of sensors. For each of these, you can also determine their characteristics. Then you probably have some requirements for the resolution which can range from a couple of hundred meters per pixel to an incredible thirty centimeters per pixel. Another important requirement is the fly-over time, which determines how long it takes for a satellite to pass by the same location twice. And of course, we cannot forget that there is a cost to all this. Premium EO data can go from a few cents to over 50 euros per square kilometer.

Spring cleaning

Before you can start building applications, you need to do a bit of cleaning to make the data ready for use. Depending on the provider of your data this can be a lot of work or none at all. We distinguish three main steps that typically have to be taken. First is noise removal. Noise sources like stray light, smear and dark offset can automatically be dealt with by using specialized algorithms. Second is pixel labeling, meaning that for each pixel in every picture the location and timestamp need to be determined. Luckily, AI can help you in this early stage as well. There are plenty of algorithms available for this purpose.

The third step can be quite tricky. If you have selected multiple sensors to measure the same phenomena, you need to correct for inter-instrument bias. What do we mean by this? Each of these sensors should be measuring the exact same thing. However, slight differences might occur resulting in different values for the same phenomena. Incorrectly using this raw data could be disastrous for your project. It is of vital importance to correct this bias first! Fortunately, machine learning algorithms can be employed to this bias and correct it, even if we don’t fully understand where the bias is coming from.

Supervised vs. unsupervised model ©VERHAERT

Applications

Spring cleaning is done and the data is now ready to use. It’s time to actually build algorithms that can extract insights from the data. Typically, you would want to use a supervised learning algorithm for this kind of problem. But, that means we need examples to teach the algorithm what it should do. And I don’t just mean a few. A large dataset needs to be gathered and manually labeled in order to be able to build a good algorithm. You want to determine the air quality from spectral imaging? Well, then you need to make a lot of manual measurements first so the algorithm can learn from your examples.

Of course, this kind of approach is very expensive, so don’t we know a better way? Within the world of machine learning there also exists a group of unsupervised learning algorithms. These don’t need examples at all. One of the more interesting approaches to earth observation goes as follows:

1. 1. You select the sensors which should capture your problem quite well
   2. You apply a clustering algorithm with a high number of classes on this data. This algorithm can divide the world into similar parts based on this data.
   3. Finally, it’s up to a domain expert to give meaning to these classes.

Let’s go back to the air quality example. If the right information is contained in the data, the clustering algorithm will divide the world into parts with similar air quality. It is then up to a domain expert to give meaning to these classes in order to make the algorithm usable. Measurements still need to be made, but far less than before. The result is an approach that is much cheaper both in time and resources.

Conclusion

Leveraging AI techniques enables us to automatically generate insights from the vast amount of earth observation data that is at our disposal. In these times of rapid globalization, this is a must as we just can’t keep up performing these tasks manually. If you want to generate insights from the vast amount of earth observation data that is at your disposal. And even if you want to generate these insights manually, you can benefit from AI to clean up your data.  No matter how you look at it, AI has become critical in any earth observation project we can imagine. Applying it unlocks a whole new area of opportunities.

Want to learn more about AI in data observation? Take a look at this webinar session!

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First of all, congratulations to you and your teams on winning the CASSINI Business Accelerator contract! Pieter, for anyone who hasn’t heard about it, could you explain to us what this contract is all about?

“Yes, of course. The CASSINI Business Accelerator is a program from the European Commission to accelerate space start-ups and make them competitive in the global market. With a budget of €8.5 million, the European Commission wants to pull European space companies out of the shadows of the highly-invested American and Asian projects.”

What will this mean in practice? How will this money be used?

“The program will offer support through both learning and acceleration support, and €6 million in seed money. So the largest part of the budget will be dedicated to supporting the accelerated start-ups and scale-ups financially after finishing the program. The acceleration journey itself will consist of learning (Verhaert) and acceleration support (Plug and Play, CIVITTA and Sting) in dedicated locations and markets of interest, as well as mentorship in key areas such as sales and business development planning, investment readiness, and market expansion.”

A well-rounded program with a clear purpose! Who will be eligible for this program?

“All starting entrepreneurs within the European Union that are working on space-related innovation projects can apply to this program. Twice a year, 20 start-ups or scale-ups will be selected to participate in the 6-month acceleration journey.”

Benoit, you and your team are taking on quite the challenge. Why is Verhaert’s OpenLab in such a good spot to shape and manage the CASSINI Business Accelerator?

“Well, the CASSINI Business Accelerator is definitely the biggest accelerator contract we’ve ever won, but it’s not our first time managing this type of initiative. Over the last decade, we had a big role in other space acceleration initiatives like setting up and managing the ESA Space Solutions Center Belgium, including technology transfer, business incubation and funding. On top of that, we’ve co-organized programs like FIRE, Point.IoT and recently the CASSINI Hackathons. All this experience gives us the confidence to take on this new challenge together with Plug and Play, CIVITTA and Sting.”

Based on your experiences, what’s one aspect people sometimes overlook when setting up this kind of program?

“Acceleration programs are not a one-size-fits-all solution. Even if you set up a thematic accelerator targeted to one market, you still need to allow room for tailored support. The larger the group of participants, the more different their needs will be. To make sure all teams are fit to become key players in the international market, you will have different gaps to fill. That’s why we’re so pleased that Verhaert Innovation Academy, part of the Verhaert group, will also support this. Customizable innovation courses are one of their key offerings and expertises.”

Dany, you must feel really proud of your team for reaching this milestone. So tell us, what does this mean for the Strategic Innovation team and Verhaert in general?

“This contract confirms that we’re not only leaving a mark in the Belgian, but also the European and global innovation landscape. It’s truly a milestone in our efforts to help boost the European capacity to innovate and puts us in the pole position to continue doing so. Innovation is a well-established growth strategy, but unfortunately, the return is often too low. That’s where we can help.”

So does this mean that this accelerator will also benefit other innovation domains?

“Definitely! What Formula 1 does for the automotive industry, space does for many innovation areas on Earth. Space has become a very dynamic industry: large private space companies like SpaceX, Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic are inspiring many small companies to capitalize on the innovation wave too. It’s become a technological playground to develop new materials, systems, technologies and so much more. That’s why ESA Space Solutions Belgium, for example, has been investing heavily in transferring space technology into everyday applications. It’s the future for innovation on Earth.”

And a final question, why should European NewSpace start-ups apply for the CASSINI Business Accelerator?

“Getting your product or service to the market successfully is not a walk in the park. Doing it alone is nearly impossible. Regardless of how far your technology stands, you still need an entire ecosystem to make it ready to launch. And that’s the unique offer of the CASSINI Business Accelerator, a direct link to experienced industry experts to build your network and connect with investors.”

Special thanks to Pieter, Benoit and Dany!

	Pieter Deleye Manager Innovation Acceleration Services – Strategic Innovation
	Benoit De Vrieze Coordinator OpenLab
	Dany Robberecht Director Strategic Innovation

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Introducing the CASSINI Business Accelerator

The growth of space companies in the Americas and Asia has often overshadowed the many different players in Europe, in the USA for example, funding is 9 times higher than in the European Union. With the CASSINI Business Accelerator, the European Commission will boost entrepreneurship in space-related businesses across the EU to reclaim its position in the market. This contract consists of a €6 million fund that will be divided across the accelerated start-ups and scale-ups at the end of a 6-month journey.

The 2-year contract to organize this accelerator has been awarded to a consortium of 3 companies. Within the consortium, Verhaert Masters in Innovation has the lead, assisted by Plug and Play Tech Center, CIVITTA, and Sting. The consortium will ensure space participants are prepared and are facilitated in international sales and investment gathering. After these 2 years, the contract can be extended with another 2 years and a total investment of €17 million.

What will participants get out of it?

Every year 40 start-ups and scale-ups will be accelerated with a focus on scaling them from local peripheries to a European and global market as well. The program will allow entrepreneurs across Europe to connect with potential clients and investors across different countries, changing the narrative from local to international.

Verhaert will lead the consortium and manage the project, with a focus on providing learning support for the participants. CIVITTA, Plug and Play, and Sting will provide acceleration support in dedicated locations and markets of interest, as well as mentorship in key areas such as sales and business development planning, investment readiness, and market expansion.

“Our mission is to get more funds to invest in exciting European space companies. Supporting these start-ups early on, will give them the boost they need to get picked up by VCs and become key players in the international market”, continues Tomas Jonsson, CASSINI Space Entrepreneurship Initiative.

The first communications will be initiated in the coming weeks and the first cohort of 20 participants will be welcomed in May 2023.

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The CASSINI Hackathons and Mentoring, initiated by the European Union and its space program, is a series of 6 hackathons that tackle global challenges using European space technologies. Now in its 3rd edition, this hackathon provides access to European space data, information and signals from Copernicus, Galileo and EGNOS, plus other valuable tools to help participants take on one of our three pressing challenges. The top ideas will be awarded at both local and EU levels, and the overall winners will enter a 6-month mentoring program that includes 100 hours of customized expert mentoring.

Here’s what to expect

If you’re a rising innovator in Europe, you’re invited to participate in the CASSINI Hackathon at one of our 10 locations. Each hackathon location features its own unique set of experts, prizes, and additional special features. Once you select a location, it’s time for registration, team formation and ideation! Your team will choose to solve one of three challenges, all related to the theme of European tourism:

1. Creating sustainable destinations: Develop innovative ideas or design new products or services that reduce the carbon footprint of tourism travel. For this challenge, participants are encouraged to explore the areas of carbon footprint measurement, alternative destinations or modes of transport, online travel agents and other intermediaries, disruptive travel concepts, and understanding travel patterns between cities or countries.
2. Experiencing lesser-known cities and cultures: Develop innovative ideas or design new products or services to offer travelers a unique and sustainable way to experience local destinations while supporting local businesses and communities. For this challenge, participants are encouraged to explore the areas of crowd management and slow tourism, personal recommendations and itineraries, social recognition and social media, state-of-the-art virtual travel experiences, and supporting local businesses and communities.
3. Exploring nature with care: Develop innovative ideas or design new products or services to offer tourists a unique and sustainable opportunity to explore our nature. For this challenge, participants are encouraged to explore the areas of conservation of local nature and biodiversity, social recognition, and social media, supporting local businesses and communities, the generation of (new) routes and points of interest, and tourist information about the environmental state of areas.

Get your spot

Remember, no previous space experience is required! This is your chance to engage with the sector, even if it’s for the first time. The application process couldn’t be easier: simply choose a challenge and decide how you’ll leverage EU space technologies to reshape European tourism. Register here: hackathons.cassini.eu

Hackers aren’t the only ones who can take advantage of the CASSINI Hackathons & Mentoring. If you’d like to participate as an organizer or mentor, we’d love to hear from you. All interested individuals, organisations, companies, and institutions are invited to apply to support the next generation of space-based entrepreneurs. Information on how to get involved can be found here for mentors and organizers.

Now is your chance to become part of this exciting European initiative to promote EU Space technology and its many applications. Hack with a purpose and leverage EU space data, services, and signals to strengthen and transform the way Europe does tourism! More information: hackathons.cassini.eu

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EO for reliable, detailed and up-to-date information

Innovating NewSpace starts with improving optics in micro- & nanosatellites, data processing through algorithms and embedded AI Particularly earth observation proves to be a versatile tool for reliable, detailed and up-to-date information on services on Earth.

Using satellite data allows you to see the bigger picture, derive clear connected patterns and supplement local infrastructure for prediction models. Earth observation opens the doors for future business application in several fields, from agriculture and marine, to urban planning and material management.

4 sessions, 4 earth observation challenges

Although earth observation systems have improved tremendously over the years, the challenges in providing cost-effective data, making micro- and nanosatellite optical systems more effective and integrating AI, are still to be solved. During this webinar we’ll tackle 4 recurring challenges in 4 sessions:

• 9h30 – Commercializing EO through daily global coverage (Aerospacelab)
• 10h00 – Optical design challenges for earth observation (Lambda-X)
• 10h30 – Preserving EO data quality through in orbit calibration (VITO)
• 11h00 – The critical role of AI in earth observation (Verhaert)

Discover new insights on sustaining successful EO-based products and services in this era of big data and IoT during the ReThinking NewSpace webinar. For more information about the sessions, please visit the event page.

Sign up for the webinar ‘ReThinking NewSpace’

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Investor matchmaking is common practice, however we notice that many capital resources are underexplored and start-ups often lack readiness, even though they have only one chance to make a first good impression. Our insights are based on the vast experience of our team and supported with research from third parties. Our innovative approach for the CASSINI Matchmaking is entirely based upon these insights in order to make this action an unprecedented success.

Culture shift from closed innovation to open innovation became a fact, matchmaking is trending

In an ever-changing global economy, reach, access and innovation are among the assets that support a company’s success. Developing cutting-edge products and services, and getting them in front of the right customers is key to business success.

Innovation comes in different flavors. Corporates have always been active in incremental innovation of their products and systems – often making use of new technological evolutions – to improve their core value propositions. While core innovation is an essential activity for companies to be successful, for most it demands a disproportional effort to obtain significant (technical) improvements on the performance of their products and systems. Obviously, the high maturity level of technologies used, and the fact other players are adopting these technologies as well – hence reaching similar performance levels – make it difficult to obtain a unique, sustainable competitive advantage. Nonetheless, incremental innovations remain important to sustain a company’s cash cows (revenue generating value propositions). These research and development activities are typically done in house.

In order to generate adjacent and breakthrough innovations, companies have started to look outside their corporate environment as well. Following PwC’s Innovation Benchmark from 2017 that surveyed over 1.200 executives in 44 countries, already 61% of companies embraced open innovation to generate new ideas and 55% adopted co-creation with customers, partners, and suppliers. Further, about a third of the surveyed leaders indicated that technology drives their innovation roadmap; half of them experiment with and adopt emerging technology platforms to create breakthrough innovations. Of course, this complicates the innovation projects ahead as new technology development, application development and market development must be executed concurrently. These new innovations deliver an extension of the existing value propositions, hence create new opportunities for growth.

Investor backed or corporate backed start-ups are on the rise, but unfortunately lack ability to scale

According to McKinsey, only one in five market incumbents (existing industry players) succeed in scaling their new business initiatives after their initial success. Also, in the world of start-ups where only one in two hundred become actual scale-ups according to the Growth Institute, scaling is considered a fundamental challenge. In general, these are discouraging failure rates. But does it have to be that way?

Probably not. Two-thirds of all value creation is achieved through scale-ups according to McKinsey’s research. While most companies focus on setting up new businesses, the payoff is found in the ability to scale. Based on an analysis of US venture capital data, two-thirds of value is created when a company can penetrate a target market and capture a significant portion of that market as illustrated above. VC firms have a clear understanding of that value. Of the $135 billion invested by US VC firms in 2018, 63% was deployed to enable successful start-ups to scale their product or service (series C funding and later). Any scaling venture is the product of an investment or partnership resulting from a successful match. Among the start-ups that successfully built a product and completed at least series B funding, only 22% succeed at scaling independently, says the McKinsey study. Following the same research another 27% are absorbed at some point through an M&A transaction with a corporate partner and are successful. Early partnerships with corporates are therefore often vital because they create a pathway for more intensive collaboration or an M&A transaction. About 51% manage to sustain themselves but cannot scale, or they just die off.

This challenge is particularly important for the European Earth Observation (EO) industry. According to the 2019 Copernicus Market Report, 30% of the EO companies in Europe are considered small, even 66% are reckoned micro. We should create more unicorns from the vast pool of EO SME landscape and matchmaking with corporates is a proven tactic.

While there’s less data publicly available about the success of corporate-backed ventures, we observe similar patterns there as well. Many corporates operate “innovation factories” to launch new businesses, but few of them ever become a sizable new business unit of the parent. At Verhaert, we operate multiple of these innovation factories, helping our clients to achieve a better result. And we succeed in that. Even though the results are a bit better with investor backed ventures, both venture models (corporate innovation factories and investor backed start-ups or SMEs) seem to have difficulties in setting up a sustainable growth business.

This inhibits the success of matchmaking events significantly. All stakeholders have had disappointing experiences in the past. In particular, larger scaled events with the goal to set up industry matchmaking have delivered dispiriting results. We’ve done a thorough analysis of the causes behind this and thought deeply on how to resolve them in the view of the New Space ecosystem action.

Download the perspective to continue reading on how matchmaking between industry and start-ups needs adequate collaboration operandi

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