The Artemis Project is an initiative by Blue Tech Forum. Described in the most simple way, it’s a competition for water treatment companies where winning companies get awarded.

Winners of awards; http://theartemisproject.com/clients/ reported after the competition that the recognition they received enormously helped in their fundraising.

Participating companies were rated by industry experts on four aspects:

• Intellectual property
• Technology
• Market potential
• Team

In the category of intellectual property, companies were rated on their established intellectual property position, the strength of processes around idea extraction, invention documentation and the IP strategy in general.

In the category of technology, companies were rated on the bottom line value of their technologies. Factors like ease of integration with existing solutions, fit for key applications and value of solution (contribution to cost reduction and environment) played the biggest role.

In the category of market potential, focus was on the size of the total addressable market over the full life of the products, the immediate value upon initial product introduction and the length of the sales cycle for the company’s products.

In the team category, companies were evaluated on the combined scientific, technical, market and industry background of their management teams and the participation of investors with a relevant background and network.

Investors analyze the fore mentioned categories when they make decisions about potential investments. Value of technology and market potential are probably the most important factors for investors; closely followed by intellectual property and the team factor.

This taxonomy could serve as a guideline for a Cleantech company´s Public Relations campaign with investors as a target group. The explicit description of its IP management, value of technology, market potential and the mentoring board with its industry relations helps demonstrate the true value of a cleantech organization.

Intellectual property and the team factor can actively be developed and described by a company. The value of technology and market potential are often given circumstances that may change from moment to moment, but are harder to influence. For many cleantech companies, intellectual property strategy and the organization’s team should therefore be highlighted more often. Companies should never underestimate the power of well-planned public relations campaign targeted towards potential investors.