A conversation ten years in the making: the CORE Innovation Group story
We recently joined Haris Tsotsos on his YouTube channel, ΤΕΧΝΟΛΟΓΙΚΟ ΕΠΙΧΕΙΡΕΙΝ (@GreekTechEntrepreneurship), for a conversation about the last decade of CORE Innovation Group. Haris first came across our work at an exhibition roughly two years ago, and even in those two short years a lot has changed for us, so having him mark our 10th anniversary with this conversation felt extra special.
The beginning: chemistry before company
CORE Innovation Group started in 2012, when Stefanos Kokkorikos and Nikos Kyriakoulis met in a professional setting and found they thought about problems in a similar way.
Four years later, in 2016, right in the middle of the Greek economic crisis, they made took the leap and founded CORE Innovation. At that time, the easiest thing would have been to wait, but they didn’t. Taking action despite uncertainty is a mindset that has stayed in with the company ever since.
A decade of transformation
For most of its early life, CORE Innovation was a research-first organisation, deeply embedded in the European R&D ecosystem, building expertise and credibility through competitive EU-funded programmes.
The past several years, though, have brought a deliberate shift: from pure research activity towards the development and commercial launch of industrial products. And this is where the concept of innovation management takes the center stage: the discipline of bridging the gap between what research produces outputs and actual what the market actually needs. Taking a result that works in a lab and turning it into something an industrial operator can deploy and rely on entirely.
The clearest example of that journey is COREbeat, our predictive maintenance platform, today a fully commercial product, live in real industrial environments. Its story begins in 2020, when, through an EU-funded research project, we developed a predictive maintenance algorithm that proved its worth, giving us the confidence to take it out of the lab and transform it to what is now COREbeat. The transition is not easy, and Stefanos and Nikos were candid about that in the conversation. There's a particular kind of growing pain that comes with moving from the world of academic rigour to the unforgiving market feedback of the market. One of the hardest lessons? Learning not to fall in love with your own product features and instead listening to what the market is actually telling you.
High technology, made entirely in Greece
Everything we build, we build here. Our R&D is entirely in Greece, by a team of 60+ professionals who have chosen to develop their careers at home. At a time when brain drain remains a real problem for the country, that matters.
A culture built on equal ground
Ours is a notably young team, and that's very much by design. We invest in fresh talent and we give them the space and the opportunity to develop. New technologies need new minds, and we have always believed that the best way to stay at the frontier is to grow alongside the people who will define it.
It also shows up in the numbers. Without ever setting it as a formal target, CORE Innovation Group has arrived at a near 50-50 gender balance across the team, with women currently making up a slight majority of its technical staff.
Looking back, looking forward
Stefanos and Nikos have spent ten years building something they believe in, whilst it was not the easiest choice. Watching them talk about their journey and aspirations with honesty and warmth is a reminder of how much can change in a decade. We hope you enjoy the conversation!
