Your experience

Bad! 

I had some really new ideas and tried to find support to its implementation in 2010. 

One needs to learn the new profession(s) of 

What are these different financial instruments?

What are the requirements to be met to prepare the project proposal?

What major and minor (tricky important) details are in the budget preparation, 

What documents regarding the financial status of our organization (e.g. SME accounting, balance last years, etc) need to be presented (accounting companies themselves do not understand some requirements e.g. related to R&D definitions).

Most important is that the project document is read by experts which need nicely written "fairy tale" which is written to be convincing enough to get necessary evaluation rating. It is rather far from the actual content of innovation and its possible future impact. Take simple common example: Larry and Sergei, from the unknown company Google present project proposal about new search algorithm to the evaluating experts who perfectly knows that there are already several fantastic search engines like AltaVista, Yahoo, etc.

They would have needed first to learn a lot "How to prepare and present right project proposal to ..." 

No chance to pass through!

There are too many cases of both 

- Failed projects which somehow grew up without very much needed support however much later  

- Projects which were very successful in evaluations but did not result in any significant outcomes. 

Your ideas

How would you improve your experience?

The practice is well developed already by venture capitalists; there is no need to invent just to take the best and change the overall approach. 

The rules of the game should not not be written by people which do not lose anything (they have positions and stable salaries, which they do not want to lose. They do not earn or profit on success either and they have more protective and sometimes romantic/generic vision of the process.

The bureaucratic regulations are like continuously growing fences: its height stops more and more innovators in their desire to jump.

The proposals: 

1. Require authors to work on clear formulations and refining of own ideas, proving its basics and own vision. It is absolutely necessary like VC require because it should be obligatory for innovator/inventors/project partners to present the idea and expected results.

2. Have clearly formulated rules of per-selections with rights for resubmission after negative pre-evaluation having well done results of evaluation (it worth to spend money for this as educational and refining instrument)

3. Set special international review panels for the projects / proposal which are accepted providing authors some time to present their ideas, validate it, possibly demonstrate and answer questions by the relevant specialists presented at such panels. 

4. Have more embedded risk accepted like VC does. There are no warranties and no other way. All such projects are experiments. 

The most important that those who undertake these project become responsible, visible and traceable.

The overall approach need to be changed: it brings larger and more complex overhead, costs, increases entry barrier, involves more and more people who do not have any relations to innovative process and its support.

best regards

Serge

P.S. We did happen to make prototype running however yet without many of those funds which are announced to help to make it happen. 

It was very hard. Much could have been achieved already ...

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