On the 11th of April, 2024, the GRAPHERGIA consortium was gathered online by AUSTRALO in the first internal Exploitation Workshop led by Antonis Sapountzis, Project Manager at our Dissemination, Communication and Exploitation partner.

The agenda of the session focused on presenting the mission and the objectives of the project to then be able to jump into a tailored exploitation strategy for the GRAPHERGIA Key Exploitable Results (KERs).

As Antonis explained, during the first year, the exploitation phase puts its attention in the exploration, by refining ideas that turn into new ideas. In the case of GRAPHERGIA, the first step of the exploitation categories are clearly defined: smart e-textiles and Li-ion batteries, products that our target market and stakeholders will need. 

GRAPHERGIA Exploitation Workshop: A masterclass and brainstorming session to redefine the KERs, customer groups and strategy

The GRAPHERGIA Exploitation Workshop consisted of two parts: the first one was a masterclass in which Antonis introduced the partners into what is an exploitation strategy and how to approach it; meanwhile the second part was an interactive brainstorming session in which the partners had to actively start working on it.

The objectives of this session was to redefine the first set of key exploitable assets, assigning owners for each key result and/or target group. To this end, Antonis insisted in some key steps:

  • To define the customer segments: Which needs or expectations do our future customers have?
  • To rethink our use cases: Are our use cases in line with our customers’ needs that GRAPHERGIA will cover?
  • To plan a detailed exploitation strategy that aligns our KERs with our target customers needs: How are we going to offer and sell our target audience our innovative products, precesses and pilot lines?, Which solutions does GRAPHERGIA offer to our customers’ problems?

This strategy, in the case of GRAPHERGIA is structured in three phases, one per each year of the project:

  1. Year 1 – Phase 1: Analyse the market needs, identifying the IPR landscape and market prices.
  2. Year 2 – Phase 2:  Analyse the different KERs Working Groups by deploying the data from the previous market analysis and IPR landscape to refine individual strategies.
  3. Year 3 – Phase 3: Start building the business models by thinking about how our products or services are different from our competitors’, how they can generate revenues, which are the costs, etc.

During his exploitation masterclass, Antonis also focused on the importance of the GRAPHERGIA products value proposition for the analysed market, encapsulating unique benefits, key features and distinctive value for our potential customers. He also remarked that when thinking about exploitation, we not only have to picture a commercial exploitation, but also a research exploitation and technical exploitation, since GRAPHERGIA outputs can also be processes, not just the smart textiles and Li-ion batteries products themselves.

After the detailed introduction into what is an exploitation strategy, the 16 attending partners started to reflect about it in a common mural, filling in a value proposition canvas.

To close the workshop, some the next steps were set:

  • Market analysis: to develop the focused thematics, considering the challenges of the industry, business strengths and the value of GRAPHERGIA to solve the challenges.
  • Commercialisation strategies and non-commercial exploitation: to also include open access and collaboration in the exploitation strategy. 
  • IPR landscaping: to understand which results can be exploited, as the graphene market is highly competitive and the stakeholders want to protect their IPR. 
  • Sustainability: to maintain and improve the results over time, beyond the GRAPHERGIA project.