Leadership & Governance Readiness for EIC Accelerator Scale-ups

This service supports EIC Accelerator-funded start-ups and scale-ups in strengthening the leadership, governance, and organisational execution capabilities required to scale effectively beyond technological validation and early market traction. The service is designed to address non-technical scale-up challenges that commonly emerge as organisational complexity increases, including founder dependency, fragmented leadership structures, unclear decision-making responsibilities, weak accountability mechanisms, siloed execution, cross-functional misalignment, conflict avoidance, and limited governance maturity.

The service is delivered over approximately three to five months and includes a minimum of six half-day online leadership team sessions facilitated by one or two in-house ICF ACTC-certified executive and team coaches, depending on organisational complexity and team size. It is specifically targeted at founders, executive teams, and governance stakeholders of innovation-driven companies operating in deep-tech, healthcare, biotech, sustainability, industrial innovation, and other technology-intensive sectors within high-growth and investor-facing environments.

The objective of the service is to strengthen the ability of leadership teams to think, decide, and act coherently under scale-up pressure, improving the organisational conditions required to transform innovation, funding, strategic partnerships, and growth opportunities into coordinated execution and sustainable organisational performance.

The programme typically begins with an initial leadership and governance assessment, followed by structured leadership team coaching and facilitation sessions. Additional activities include decision-making and accountability reviews, governance alignment and stakeholder integration discussions, as well as optional individual coaching sessions for founders or leadership team members where relevant. The service also includes leadership assessment interviews, role and accountability mapping, governance effectiveness reviews, cross-functional coordination discussions, stakeholder alignment exercises, and organisational readiness reviews linked to scaling and strategic transformation.

Expected outcomes include clearer decision rights and accountability structures, reduced founder dependency, stronger leadership coordination, improved governance alignment, enhanced cross-functional collaboration, higher-quality decision-making processes, and increased organisational readiness for investor-facing, partnership-intensive, and high-growth environments.

The service is delivered fully online through facilitated leadership team sessions and tailored organisational coaching engagements. The service does not include proposal writing support, fundraising advisory, partner sourcing, legal advice, financial advice, or operational management consulting services.