Natalia Zielinska on What Counts as Innovation in EU Funding Applications

As a mentor at BIRD, there’s one question I hear more than any other: Is this an innovation?

And almost always I get the answer before I even finish asking — Of course it is, there’s nothing like it on the market.

That’s usually where I stop. Because “there’s nothing like it on the market” and “this is a technological innovation” are two very different things. And EU funds measure that difference mercilessly.

So let me unpack what innovation actually means in the EU funding world — and, more usefully, how the very act of preparing an application can become one of the best self-assessment tools your startup has.

Market novelty vs. technological uncertainty

Startups are, rightfully, in love with the market. You think about commercial viability, who you’re selling to, and why they’ll buy. That’s healthy — that’s exactly how it should be.

But EU funds don’t ask, “Is this new on the market?” They ask: is there technological uncertainty here?

In plain terms: why hasn’t anyone done this already? What exactly is the technical barrier? And what are you proposing as a potential solution to that barrier?

When I ask my mentees this, the most common answer is: Well… because nobody thought of it.

Honestly? I doubt it. If the solution were obvious, someone would have thought of it. If nobody has pulled it off, there’s a reason — and that reason is your actual innovation.

Here’s a concrete way to feel the difference:

• “We’re building an app that makes X easier for users.” → That’s product development. It might be excellent. It’s still not research.
• “We’re investigating whether method Y can deliver a measurably better result than existing approaches — and we honestly don’t know yet whether it will work.” → That’s technological uncertainty.

And here comes the counterintuitive part: the more complex the problem and the more uncertain the success, the better the project looks from an EU funding perspective. Knowing your market matters. Knowing your technological solution matters even more.

Practical tip: try writing your core idea as a testable hypothesis in a single sentence — If we apply X, we expect Y, and we’ll measure it with Z. If you can’t, you probably don’t have a research project yet. You have a (possibly great) product plan. And that’s a completely different application.

Once you’ve defined the uncertainty, draw the map (TRL roadmap)

Let’s say you’ve nailed down that technological uncertainty. The next step is to map out your innovation across TRL phases (Technology Readiness Levels).

This is always the first question at an EU competition: which TRL phase are you in? But it’s an equally good tool for your own self-assessment:

• If you’re still researching the concept (TRL 2) → you need to clearly define the criteria that will tell you you’ve reached proof of concept (TRL 4).
• Then: what exactly do you expect from your first prototype (TRL 5)?
• Then: what testing in simulated and real environments do you need to run (TRL 6 and 7)?
• And only then do you reach commercialization (TRL 8).

This roadmap is almost always missing from startup pitch decks. Why? Because it’s boring. It’s research-y, engineering-y, not remotely sexy, and not at all “market-facing.”

But it does the single most important thing: it helps you organize the work, set realistic deadlines, and — maybe most importantly — see which questions are still open. Think of a TRL roadmap as a to-do list for your own uncertainty.

So how do you actually prepare? (First steps)

If the theory above clicked, here’s the order I’d suggest before you touch a single application form:

1. Start from the uncertainty, not the product. Write down the technical problem you’re solving — and then dig properly into the solutions that already exist and where exactly they fall short. Don’t obsess over your market position; look at what’s out there in a technological sense, not a commercial one.
2. Do your homework on the state of the art. Read the literature, the latest technological solutions, the studies, and the analyses. That’s where you’ll find the candidate solution you actually want to implement.
3. Formulate your hypotheses. Once you’ve clearly named the concrete shortcomings of the existing solutions, turn it into a hypothesis: If we do X, we expect Y, measured by Z. Describe your technology quantitatively, not just qualitatively. “We’ll do it faster, better, nicer” is not an answer. If you can’t measure it, you can’t prove it — and without measurability, there is no R&D.
4. Map your TRL honestly. Where are you really, not where you’d like to be — and set clear success criteria for every TRL phase. No skipping.
5. Line up your team on paper. You can’t build the right team until you’ve defined those measurable, per-phase criteria. Every criterion needs an owner who can actually deliver it.
6. Remember the TRL road isn’t a one-way street. You might move from prototype back to concept, or from testing back to prototype — because analysis and testing will throw new challenges at you. That’s not failure. That’s the whole beauty of innovation: it’s uncertain by definition.

The most common mistakes I see (so you don’t repeat them)

• Confusing “new to the market” with “technologically uncertain.” The single most frequent misread. New ≠ research.
• Being certain it’ll work. Sounds confident, but it’s actually a red flag — the more uncertainty there is, the stronger the research project.
• “Because nobody thought of it.” If that’s your entire answer to why the barrier still exists, the evaluator won’t buy it either. Name the actual technical obstacle.
• Skipping the TRL roadmap because it feels unglamorous. That’s the exact part that proves you know what you’re doing.
• Faking your TRL phase to fit the call. You’ll burn your budget developing something that was never properly researched, and it’ll come back to bite you in the testing phase.
• No measurable success indicators. “It’ll be better” is not a metric. A percentage improvement, a reduction in energy use, a stability threshold over six months — those are metrics.

The bottom line

Preparing an EU project isn’t just paperwork. It turns out to be one of the most honest self-assessment tools a startup can run: it forces you to answer where you are technologically, not just where you think you are commercially.

Good business projects matter. But not every good business project is a research project — and in the EU world, that difference decides the points. And the outcome.

So next time you sit down to prepare an application, don’t start from the product. Start from the uncertainty. That’s where the real innovation begins.

And if you’re not sure which TRL phase you’re in — and you can admit it, out loud — that’s not a defeat. It’s an excellent starting position. It’s also a pretty good sign it’s time for a conversation.

Natalia Zielinska is an EU Funds & Business Consultant and startup mentor at BIRD Incubator, President of HUP’s Association of Professionals for European Union Funds, and Founder of CroBiz. She has deep experience in EU project development, deep tech innovation, and foreign investment between Poland and Croatia, specialising in EU funding strategy and business development for founders building innovative ventures.