About the Episode
In this episode of The Grant, host Niels Tudor-Vinther is joined by Christopher Adlung, a PhD researcher at TU Delft and a medtech entrepreneur, to rethink what impact actually means in EU-funded research and innovation. Christopher studies the adoption and scaling of telemedicine in low-resource settings, and that adoption-focused perspective shapes the entire conversation.
Together they challenge traditional notions of impact, arguing that true value emerges not from laboratory or pilot success alone, but from real-world adoption and usage by every stakeholder in an ecosystem. A technology can perform brilliantly in a controlled setting, yet real impact only appears when the wider ecosystem — including procurement teams, administrators, investors, technicians, managers and end users — can and wants to use it.
Episode #236 · Published 2026-08-03 · Duration 1h 13min
Key Topics Covered
- Christopher Adlung's background in PhD research on telemedicine adoption and medtech entrepreneurship.
- The issue of "dead patents" and undeveloped results in EU-funded projects due to a lack of real-world usage.
- The importance of considering all stakeholders — procurement, C-level, administrators — for technology adoption, beyond just end users.
- A critique of large, complex EU collaborative projects that blur focus and are often unsuitable for agile SMEs.
- A proposal for smaller, more focused grants to accelerate impact for SMEs and foster innovation.
- Insights into innovation in low-resource settings (e.g., Bangladesh), where necessity drives creative, cross-sectoral solutions.
- Cultural differences in innovation, contrasting Europe's risk aversion with the US's "fail fast" mentality.
- Rethinking future innovation structures — including new legal entities and long-term generational impact — beyond project funding cycles.
Why You Should Listen
Listeners will gain a fresh perspective on how to achieve meaningful impact in research and innovation, moving beyond conventional metrics. As Christopher puts it: "You may invent a technology with a certain use case in mind, that will come out. But once it gets used, meaning it gets put into practice and people need to choose that technology on their perspectives, things break."
The conversation also pushes toward a longer horizon, asking: "What is the impact that we want to generate not for now, not for the people that we know, but for the people and generations much long after us?" It closes on a note of collaboration — "We should listen more to each other. We should come closer in the sense that we should see much more what combines us rather than what segregates us."
This episode offers valuable insights for researchers, project managers, policymakers and entrepreneurs navigating the complexities of EU funding and striving for real-world adoption and societal benefit.
The Grant & EMDESK
This episode is brought to you by The Grant, an EU research-funding podcast hosted by Niels Tudor-Vinther, an EMDESK partner. Listen to the full conversation on Spotify and explore more episodes at thegrant.eu. If this discussion resonates with how you plan and deliver your own EU-funded projects, EMDESK can help you manage collaboration, budgets and reporting in one place — so your team can focus on the impact that truly matters.
