From lab to fab: What's really blocking deep tech companies from scaling

Diagnosing the gap between engineering excellence and commercial scale Your technology is ready. Is your company? Across the Brainport ecosystem, deep tech ventures rarely stall because the technology isn't good enough. They stall because scaling a breakthrough into a commercially resilient business calls for more than engineering excellence. It calls for readiness on levels most founders were never trained to assess. From lab to fab is Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University’s first in-person masterclass for scale-up leaders in semiconductors and deep tech, delivered by RSM faculty and deep tech experts. Built around a technology stack framework developed by RSM researchers with founders and experts across the Eindhoven ecosystem, the session helps participants pinpoint exactly where their own scaling challenge sits and opens a structured conversation about what to do next. Participants leave with a clear, evidence-based diagnosis of their primary constraint, developed with RSM faculty and tested against the experience of peers who work inside this ecosystem every day. The path to commercial scale The masterclass is structured around four readiness levels that determine whether a technology can scale into a resilient business, from the foundations a company controls directly to the forces it can only navigate. • Organisation: talent, operations, finance and governance. This is the foundation every other level is built on. • Technology: the grand challenge engineering that deep tech ventures in this ecosystem already do well. • Business: positioning within the technology stack, including product-market fit, partners, customers and contractual frameworks. • Future: the geopolitical, regulatory and macroeconomic forces beyond any single company's control. Together, these levels explain why many technically strong ventures stall in what founders call the valley of death, the gap between developing a technology and scaling it commercially. Control over these levels decreases as you move from organisation to future. This is why most founders underestimate the levels furthest from their daily operations. During the masterclass, RSM faculty unpack each level in depth, giving participants concrete language and examples they can apply to their own scaling journey straight away. Led by RSM faculty and deep tech experts Every session is led by RSM faculty and researchers, each speaking from their own area of expertise. • Prof. Dr. Tom Mom, Professor of Strategic Growth and Implementation, on organisational readiness. • Joseph Zekry, Founder and Director at Horizontech, on technology readiness. • Dr. Birgul Rose Arslan, Associate Professor of Innovation Strategy, on business readiness. • Niels Eldering, Head of ESA Entrepreneurship & Business Incubation Services; PhD. in Management of Technology and Operations. • Dr. Mirko Benischke, Professor of Strategic Leadership and Vice Dean of Education and Executive Education, on future readiness, and moderating the panel What to expect • A short self-assessment to identify your own primary commercialisation bottleneck, which forms the basis for the faculty panel discussion that follows. • An interactive, interview-style panel with RSM faculty addressing organisation, technology, business and future readiness in turn. • Real cases of success and failure from the deep tech and semiconductor sector. • Structured peer discussion to test your own diagnosis against the room. • Dedicated time to network with fellow scale-up leaders navigating similar deep tech and semiconductor challenges. • In person at Conference Center, High Tech Campus, Eindhoven • 30 October 2026, 16:00 - 19:00 CEST • Free of charge • Limited capacity, registration required