In episode #239 of The Grant – the EU funding podcast, I’m joined by Ana-Marija Špicnagel, Director at IPS Konzalting, for another practical episode in my Implementation Series. This time we take exploitation apart. Ana-Marija makes an important distinction from the beginning: communication tells people what you are doing, dissemination shares the results with relevant audiences, but exploitation begins when somebody actually uses those results. That use may be commercial, but it can also involve policy, regulation, education, organisational change or further research. Impact comes later as the longer-term change generated through that uptake.

The episode then becomes a hands-on guide to managing exploitation throughout project implementation. Ana-Marija explains why exploitable results should be revisited continuously rather than fixed in the proposal, using a Horizon Europe project where an initial handful of anticipated results eventually became more than 40 identifiable exploitable results. We discuss stakeholder analysis, market understanding, individual partner motivations, intellectual property and the importance of dealing with ownership while everybody is still relatively neutral. We also map a practical rhythm for exploitation across a multi-year project: introduce the topic after the project has settled, conduct individual interviews and business-model exercises, revisit the results later, and continuously involve potential users so that the final solution reflects an actual need. Above all, the episode is about moving beyond deliverables and asking the harder question: who will use this when the project funding stops?

Time codes:

02:03 Guest introduction and fly in

06:13 Defining Exploitation

18:00 Designing for Exploitation from Day One

31:57 The Consortium Challenge

37:13 From Project Results to Real Adoption

58:38 Life After the Project

01:09:07 Reflections and advice

01:10:29 The toughest challenge