In episode #246 of The Grant – the EU funding podcast, I’m joined by Carmen Bianca Socaciu, who brings more than a decade of hands-on experience with exploitation in European projects. Rather than starting with definitions, we focus on what exploitation looks like in practice: identifying results, understanding who they create value for, developing value propositions and business models, and building enough trust inside a consortium to get researchers and companies genuinely involved. Carmen explains why exploitation should begin already during proposal development, why finding the right decision-maker inside large organisations can be surprisingly difficult, and why strong exploitation work requires curiosity, commercial experience and the ability to translate between technology and market needs. We also discuss sustainability, failed market assumptions, results that are technically ready but never picked up, and Carmen’s advice to exploitation partners: be deeply invested in the result, but also know when it is time to let go.

Time codes:

02:20 Guest introduction and fly in

06:35 Understanding Exploitation

12:01 From Project Results to Real-World Use

24:37 Sustainability, Regulation and Long-Term Impact

40:11 Becoming a Strong Exploitation Partner

47:56 Reflections and advice

50:42 The toughest challenge