It was one of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s most radical ideas during her last term: a new agency that would bring to market a groundbreaking German innovation such as a way to clean up the world’s oceans and a therapy for Alzheimer’s disease.

But two years after the launch of the project by Merkel, motivated both by her own scientific background and by the fear that Europe is falling behind, the SPRIN-D agency for disruptive innovation is struggling under the weight. institutional, cultural and budgetary constraints.

Summarizing some of the frustration expressed by Merkel herself, the agency’s director, Rafael Laguna de la Vera, told Reuters: “There is a valley of death that every innovative technology has to pass through before it can be transformed into a salable product.

“In Germany this valley of death is particularly long.”

The c …