The Human Dimension: Skills You Need To Master Deep Tech

You can have the best technology and the most sophisticated business plan, but if the founding team lacks a shared vision, deeptech ventures often struggle to succeed. This keynote draws on one of the first state-supported research projects on deeptech policy instruments in France (ANR ECO-CARE), combined with 18 years of field experience at Adoc Talent Management supporting deeptech startups from lab to scale-up. This talk will argue that current support systems place strong emphasis on financing, business models, and technology transfer, while the human dimension of innovation remains often underestimated. This includes not only team formation, leadership alignment, and organisational structuring, but also the individual transitions required for researchers to become innovators and entrepreneurs. Indeed, many policy instruments encourage this transition, yet tend to overlook the individual and systemic barriers that shape researchers’ ability to adopt and embody these new roles. Combining empirical evidence from France with concrete case studies, this talk highlights a key gap in deeptech ecosystems and proposes a shift: from supporting technologies to more fully supporting the people who make them viable. For an audience bringing together researchers, startups, investors and policymakers, it offers a more nuanced understanding of what truly drives deeptech success.