Expanding Academia-Enterprise Collaborations

Overview

Objectives

Fostering the creation of innovation ecosystems and strenghtening their links.

Activities/actions supported

Actions are expected to include activities to enhance the quality of support provided to the most promising innovative Start-ups and SMEs; to improve or set up national and regional funding programmes that could qualify for certification under the Plug-in scheme of the EIC Accellerator; to share best bractices; to broaden access to information and communicate to the applicants on the opportunities to acess the national and regional funding programs and have their chance to be selected under Plug-in schemee to apply to step 2 of the EIC accellerator

Anticipated outcomes

Projects results are expected to contribute to four (4) or more of the following expected outcomes:

• Improved integration of research institutions, Higher Education Institutions, vocational schools, and similar organisations into Europe’s innovation ecosystems by establishing better links with start-ups and start-up networks, accelerators and incubators, business angels and investor communities;
• Improved flows of knowledge, skills, and talents between educational institutions and other innovation ecosystem actors at various levels of development, including in the deep tech field in line with the New European Innovation Agenda;
• Improved skills of all involved ecosystem actors to increase innovation potential, intersectoral mobility, and market uptake of new technologies; Targeted are skills necessary and responsive to innovation and labour market needs on digital, green, and entrepreneurial skills, networking skills, risk taking, and in particular in the deep tech field;
• Improved connections of educational institutions to high-quality remote testing, validation, and up-scaling of innovations delivered by research and technology infrastructures across the EU;
• Improved competence of students, graduates, researchers, and workforce to launch, run, and lead successful and profitable start-ups, including in the deep tech field;
• Enhanced availability of local talents equipped with skills to support business acceleration and digitalisation;
• Enhanced entrepreneurial activity in developing innovation ecosystems and their upscaling and interconnectedness across the EU supported by citizens and local initiatives in order to build innovative solutions to current and future challenges;
• Increased engagement and connectedness with other ecosystem actors (e.g. other educational institutions, Technology Transfer Offices, Research and Technology Organisations, local and regional enterprises, private companies, start-ups, early-stage companies, accelerators, incubators, etc.) within and between regions;
• Increased youth (self) employability and gender balance in collaborations.

Institution providing the funding

European Commission

Size of funding

EUR 2.500.000

Conditions

Overview of eligibility criteria

This action requires the participation of at least three (3) independent legal entities, established in three (3) different Member States or Horizon Europe Associated Countries, of which at least one (1) is established in a 'moderate' or 'emerging' innovator region and at least one (1) in a 'strong' or 'innovation leader' innovator region.

Overview of award criteria

Award criteria include:

• Excellence
• Impact
• Quality and efficiency of the implementation

Procedures

Application procedures

Calls may be subject to either a single-stage submission procedure or a two-stage submission procedure. The evaluation procedure may be organised in one (standard) or several steps. In the first stage of a two-stage submission, applicants will be requested to submit only an outline application (which will be evaluated against only two award criteria: ‘Excellence’ and ‘Impact’). Successful applicants will be invited to submit a full application for the second stage (which will be evaluated against the full set of award criteria).

The application form will have two parts:

• Part A (to be filled in directly online) contains administrative information about the applicant organisations (future coordinator and beneficiaries and affiliated entities), the summarised budget for the proposal and call-specific questions;
• Part B (to be downloaded from the Portal submission system, completed and then assembled and re-uploaded as a PDF in the system) contains the technical description of the project

Application support available

For further information, please check the text of the call (link below). Furthermore, you can consult the Online Manual: https://ec.europa.eu/info/funding-tenders/opportunities/docs/2021-2027/common/guidance/om_en.pdf

Useful links

Link to funding opportunity

Link to the programme for more info