WBSO Application Example: Writing a Strong Project Description

A strong project description is the heart of your WBSO application. RVO assesses whether your work is technically new and whether there is technical uncertainty. This article shows you — with a concrete WBSO application example — how to write that convincingly. Want to understand the full process first? Read our guide on applying for WBSO in 2026.

The 4 questions RVO asks

Every project description in the application form revolves around four questions:

What will you develop or research?
Why is this technically new for your company?
Which technical problems or bottlenecks do you expect?
How do you intend to solve them (solution direction)?

Answer these concretely and technically and you have a strong application. Avoid commercial language ("the best app for...") and focus on the technology and the uncertainty.

WBSO application example (software)

Below is a worked, fictional example for a software project.

What will we develop?

We are developing an algorithm for real-time route optimisation for a delivery fleet that continuously recalculates during the trip based on traffic, time windows and load capacity. The system must propose a new route within 200 ms for fleets of up to 500 vehicles.

Why is this technically new for us?

Existing solutions calculate routes in advance (static). We have no experience with dynamic recalculation under strict time pressure, and there is no existing technique within our company that solves this in a scalable way. Standard routing libraries do not support our combination of constraints.

Which technical problems do we expect?

Computation time grows exponentially with more vehicles and constraints (an NP-hard problem).

It is uncertain whether we can find a sufficiently good solution within 200 ms.

Combining live traffic data with capacity constraints may lead to unstable results.

How will we solve these problems?

We are investigating a combination of heuristics (for example a customised metaheuristic) with incremental recalculation, so that only the changed part of the route is recomputed. We build prototypes and test whether the response time and solution quality are feasible.

This setup clearly demonstrates technical novelty and uncertainty — exactly what RVO looks for.

Common mistakes

Too commercial: describe the technology, not the market opportunity.
Too vague: "we use AI" is not enough; name the concrete technical problem.
No uncertainty: if the solution already exists or is trivial, it does not qualify.
Routine work: applying existing technology without your own development does not count.

Tips for a strong application

Write a separate, well-defined description per project.
Link each technical problem to a concrete solution direction.
Keep it factual and technical; have a developer review it.
Estimate your R&D hours realistically.

Get started

Don't want to start from scratch? Manna helps you draft the project description based on your own R&D, so you submit a complete, well-substantiated application in about 90 minutes.

This article contains a fictional example for illustration. See RVO.nl/wbso for the official conditions.

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