TNO Early Research Program - Annual Plan 2023

The Early Research Programs (ERP’s) represent TNO’s early research activities. With these, TNO builds strong technology positions and contributes, together with knowledge partners and stakeholders, to answers to societal challenges and to creation of economic impact. The ERP’s represent about 5% of TNO’s turnover. The remaining 95% is steered by TNO’s stakeholders: clients, ‘Topsectors’ and Ministries (via consultation) and Defense, EZK and SZW (via task financing).
The main characteristics of the ERP portfolio are as follows:
- The programs build technology positions within the focus areas defined in the TNO Strategy Plan 2022-2025.
- The programs are use-case inspired and have clear research goals: ERPs feed multiple innovation roadmaps of TNO, often of various units but with common requirements for lower-TRL technology breakthroughs. The output of the ERPs is transferred to (higher TRL) shared innovation programs, contract research and start-up initiatives.
- The programs aim for added mass through collaboration with knowledge partners such as universities and companies and for co-investments from public and private sources.
- The programs have substantial mass ( > 1 mln Euro ERP budget per program per year) and have a typical duration of four years.
- ‘Full ERP’ programs are usually preceded by one-year ‘Seed ERP’ projects that explore the feasibility of the topic, substantiate the impact to be expected and build required partnerships, thus developing the full ERP program. Out of the ten ‘Seed ERP’ projects 2022, the five strongest were selected for continuation as Full ERPs in the period 2023-2026.
- ERP funnel management (involving reviews by TNO Corporate Science Office and by the board of TNO’s Science Directors) is in place to monitor the progress and to adjust and reallocate resources if necessary.
- Together with our ministry of Economic Affairs (EZK) we inform the Topsectors and Ministries of our portfolio of ERP’s, aiming at early involvement of companies and other stakeholders in public-private cooperation.
The ERP portfolio (as illustrated in Figure 1.2) includes a lower number of programs in their 3d and 4th year and a higher number in their 1st and 2nd year. An important goal of the ERP portfolio management is to bring the portfolio to a ‘steady state’ in which every year a similar number (4-5) of existing ERP’s ends and new ERP’s can be initiated. Only then will TNO be able to respond continuously and with agility to new technology trends and needs. Moreover, TNO’s researchers will thus be stimulated to continuously be on the outlook for impactful new research directions, knowing that there is an instrument to award and adopt the best ideas. Our multiannual financial planning now allows for this desired ‘steady state’.