RVO audit? From problem child to poster boy

Facing the Audit: Initial Impressions and Challenges

Yesterday, we welcomed an auditor to our office to assess our administration and if we had fulfilled the original plan. We passed with flying colors, but it didn’t seem that way from the start. The initial conversation was a barrage of probing our admin, probing hours, invoices, and activities, including a deep-dive into Git, our code-base, our hardware prototypes, and experiment reports. We felt uncomfortable and exposed, showing the inner workings of our innovation and product development process.

Adapting to Change: Navigating Technical Innovation

The second part of the audit was only slightly better. Taking a report submitted ages ago and trying to assess if we stayed true to the plan. Anybody who has been involved in technical innovation knows that plans set a direction but need to change according to circumstances. And we had quite a lot.

Finally, the intent of the subsidy was discussed. Did we fulfill the original ambition and address a technological challenge that presented a hurdle on our path towards the next TRL level and ultimately the successful product launch? Here, the tone of the conversation changes 180 degrees. We could clearly show how creative, persistent, and tech-savvy we were in addressing real thorny technical challenges. For instance, how we orchestrated data-collection of 2m data-points with 20+ students, to capture the complexity of different products on sensors was a compelling story to share. Similarly, getting ghosting and cross-talk out of our sensors, a common yet largely unsolved problem in matrix sensors, brought the best of our analytics, software, and hardware capabilities together to make this an issue of the past.

Recognition and Gratitude: Acknowledging the Role of RVO Subsidies

After a rough start, the auditor recognized that we were not a problem case but in fact a poster-boy of the subsidy vehicles. He couldn’t say what triggered the audit; it could have been a simple luck of the draw. He approaches every audit with a healthy suspicion of fraud or malintent but was also relieved to quickly turn the page and focus on the ingenuity enabled by the financial backing.

We value the subsidy vehicles of RVO and would like to thank them for their confidence in us. We understand that accepting a publicly funded subsidy comes with a sense of responsibility to use it wisely. We are very proud that the subsidies that we received from RVO have contributed to the breakthrough in technology at MOOS and have paved the way for a highly competitive offering and a healthy business. Without the initial subsidies to overcome technical hurdles, we would not have been where we are today.