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“Green transition” refers to an economy-wide shift away from high-impact, resource-intensive activities toward practices that remain within planetary boundaries and support long-term sustainability, resilience, and well-being (OECD, 2025). Its aim is to reduce—and keep—the cumulative impacts of human activity within Earth’s ecological limits (OECD, 2025). Deep technologies—advanced, emerging technological solutions to major societal challenges—are one pathway to accelerate this transition. Advanced materials, aerospace, quantum computing, biotechnology, artificial intelligence, robotics, and semiconductors are often cited as examples (EIT, 2023).
The European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT) defines deep tech as institutions, organizations, or startups that develop such deep technologies (EIT, 2023). Deep techs tend to build highly complex products and systems that integrate sophisticated hardware and software. They often tackle scientific and engineering problems that require long R&D cycles and substantial investment. Their progress is frequently constrained by shortages of engineering talent, making it essential to attract young and international professionals. They also rely on strong innovation ecosystems—clusters of collaborating organizations that support prototyping and commercialization (Romme, 2022).
The eight EU cities and three AA cities participating in this CoP have, at least, one thing in common, their innovation ecosystems actively engage in developing deep techs. Most of them are the location for industrial clusters which are particularly strong in complex hardware manufacturing and system-level design, a environment required for deep techs to flourish. Some cities have led deep tech entrepreneurial ecosystems for several decades, while others have only recently begun transforming into such ecosystems. The CoP will help participating local governments build on their strengths while addressing gaps, with the ultimate goal of translating scientific excellence into global commercial success. The diverse group of cities participating in this CoP should benefit from productive discussions with one another.
The CoP members, led by Grenoble Alpes Métropole, have convened six times to decide on the topics to address, as well as the meeting format. They have agreed to create three subgroups, each focusing on a different stage of the startup lifecycle:
- Early stage: Investor attraction (Subgroup 1)
- Growth stage: Talent attraction (Subgroup 2)
- Expansion stage: SME internationalization and deep tech transfer (Subgroup 3)
Grenoble leads Subgroup 1, Warsaw leads Subgroup 2, and Espoo leads Subgroup 3.
