You are Anke Verstraeten, eleven days into the job as Head of Innovation at Lumen Coatings in Antwerp. A Dutch rival has just launched the hull coating your laboratory has spent three years building. On Monday you have to say what happens to Project Tritón.
The situation
Lumen Coatings, founded in 1981, makes anti-corrosion, anti-microbial and self-cleaning surface treatments: €240 million of revenue, 95 scientists and engineers in a single research centre, and €19.2 million a year of research, 8% of revenue, spent entirely on projects conceived in-house. It holds 140 active patents; fewer than 30% have ever been commercialised and about 98 sit unused. Its projects take 38 months from start to launch; the industry average is 24.
On 14 January, AquaShield BV launched a self-cleaning hull coating that cuts drag and fouling: claim for claim, Tritón. AquaShield got there first by licensing a core enzyme from a university spin-out and developing the rest with a Korean shipyard. Tritón has consumed €8.4 million over three years; finishing it in-house needs €3.6 million more and fourteen months. Analysts size the premium segment at €22 million of revenue over its first three years and expect the first company to reach it to take 55–60%.
The same spin-out would license its enzyme to Lumen for €2.8 million on signature plus 6% of net sales, which would bring launch forward to eight months. But AquaShield has tabled an exclusive offer to buy the spin-out outright, and its advisers want positions by Friday. Your two internal rivals for the job, both from the laboratory and both now reporting to you, have spent three years on Tritón. You cannot sign a licence without the finance director's counter-signature, and the chair's brief fits in one sentence: bring the 38 months closer to 24 without giving away what customers pay Lumen for.