## 6 Conclusions  
Engaging and understanding customer needs is crucial to successful market pickup of newly developed technology and innovation. Smart grid R&D projects are capital-intensive and are often funded through public money with the intention to solve the challenges of target customers (public and commercial entities). Thus, it is important that customer needs are aligned with technology developers' perceptions about the market as early as possible in development process. This paper provided a method to identify gaps between technology developers' perceptions and customer needs in the low Technology Readiness Level (TRL) smart grid project.  
The method was applied on technologies developed in the H2020 RESOLVD project. The results showed that the challenges which DSOs face under high renewable penetration were in line with technology developers' perceptions. However, the need and the urgency of technology varied, which could be associated with the local context of DSOs (like regulations and renewable penetration level). The untapped potential of using data from smart meters has been identified, which could be leveraged as an important selling point for the decision support toolkit developed in the project. The results from the broader survey showed that three value propositions, namely improved fault detection and critical event prevention, improved voltage control ability and reduced technical losses, are the ones which will be needed urgently by DSOs within five years. The S&R analysis which focused on the technology developers showed that respondents also rated these value propositions highly. This indicates that technology developers should prioritize maturing solutions so as to fulfil urgently needed value propositions. The paper showed that cybersecurity was rated as relevant and urgent by DSOs but had lower critical factor index (CFI) values among technology developers. Most of the DSOs showed interest and were prepared for implementing the RESOLVD solution, but the ones which were not indicated a lack of infrastructure as the reason for not being prepared. Most of the DSOs identified unclear regulation as a barrier to use flexibility in grid management. This has important business implications for the success of the power electronic device in the market. The methodology proposed in this paper has provided key insights for technology developers to strategize further technology development in line with DSO needs.  
A.M.B. and S.P.: conceptualization, methodology, formal analysis, draft preparation, review and editing; H.T.: review and editing, supervision; F.D.-G.: draft preparation, formal analysis. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.  
The RESOLVD project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under grant agreement No. 773715. The information and views set out in this study are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official opinion of the European Union. Neither the European Union institutions and bodies nor any person acting on their behalf may be held responsible for the use which may be made of the information contained therein.  
Not applicable.  
This to [PERSON] for supporting the design of the customer survey. The authors declare no conflict of interest.