Reporting on technology innovation in Central Europe
Successful participation to the European Community programmes demands quite a bit of self-promotion.
Evaluators tend to judge European dimension of consortia by the number of countries participating to the project. Co-ordinators are, therefore, often obliged to put on board partners that they do not know from before.
How to find them?
Directly related to this website are the events we hold in Hungary, Czechia and Slovakia to help local business people get connected to FP6 funding programs. Last night I held such an event here in Budapest, for an audience of about 40 people - a mixture of MBA students, entrepreneurs and business people. FP6 is the EU’s program to fund tech R&D.
One strong impression from last night: there’s a vast disconnect between the murky, bureaucratic logic of FP6 and how people actually do business. It takes ages to explain these procedures to intelligent people!
Continue reading ‘Strategies for success in FP6′
Networking national research programmes comes as a novelty to the EU research framework programme. The so-called ERA Net scheme was introduced in 2002 with the aim to strengthen the European Research Area by supporting the trans-national networking and co-ordination of national research programme implementers (agencies) and owners (ministries).
Most of the projects financed under ERA Net scheme obliged themselves to, first, establish a common platform for a certain programme, and then, run a pilot common call. In such call, common procedures are used for multilateral international projects.
In short, ERA Nets were established to bring more EUREKA-like work that proved successful but has also shown its limits in the last 20 years.
Continue reading ‘Industrial Associations in Trans-national Research’
As Framework Programme 6 is coming gradually to its natural end, preparations for FP7 are taking up speed. Despite of some setbacks with EU financial perspective and budget for 2007-2013, which was declined in the Parliament some weeks ago, it is becoming ever more clear that the next programme will be more ambitious and will provide larger incentives both for academia as well as industry for participation.
Continue reading ‘Rules for participation in FP7 actions’
In the process of preparing researchers for the coming 7th Framework Programme and actively participating to the European Research Area Slovenian Ministry of Higher Education, Science and Technology decided to support the establishment of national technology platforms. They reflect the European initiatives.
The European Commission in 2004 started to actively encourage the development of the European Technology Platforms. These initiatives should unite as many as possible European stakeholders in a certain technological field. The groups should be able to better participate in the European research policy by creating their own strategic research agenda (SRA) that reflect wider needs. Moreover, the groups should be able to implement concrete research projects in a more effective way. Some of European Technology platforms will, following the example of Gallileo initiative, become legal personalities sui generis through a new measure of the 7th Framework Programme, namely Joint Technology Initiative.
The European Commission is financing a large number of supporting projects in all thematic priorities of FP6. Only in the IST priority there is more than 50 projects aimed at increasing the number and quality of proposals (in a form of proposal development as a conventional activity) and introduction of specific services (focused on financial issues, special applications and tools, mapping reports and databases, research promotion services, etc.).
I have already described the GiST application for proposal development in my previous article. Today I will focus on the specific (’bonus’ or ‘go-beyond’) services introduced by the IST Bonus project aimed at development and promotion of the research profiles and creation of the research action plans.
Continue reading ‘Research Bonus Services for e-working and e-business sector in the IST’
Low quality of proposals submitted to the EC programmes by the newcomers (mainly small and medium sized enterprises but also research organisations from new member states - NMS) appears to be one of the most significant problems in their successful participation in the Framework programme. New on-line application called ‘Get In Software Tool’ developed under the EC supported project allows preparation of the complete proposal in the most interactive way and respecting the submission and evaluation criteria.
Continue reading ‘GiST - On-line application for the Framework Programme proposals preparation’
Oseo Anvar, the French Agency for Innovation and the Paris metropolitan regional authority launched last year a joint action in order to enhance cooperation amongst SMEs of the region and their participation in FP6 programmes.
This pilot action aims at integrating SMEs and to give them the possibility of better targeting their project and prepare their technological strategy in the framework of the EU.
Besides a concrete support (case studies, know-how transfer, etc.) on the preparation of projects within FP programmes, Amorce Europe networks SMEs during seminars and contributes to the identification of possible partnerships. SMEs intending to participate in European projects benefit from tailor-made consulting and financial support.
Launched for a period of 18 months, Amorce Europe will end in June 2006.
Yesterday I met Vilmos Bognar, Hungary’s National Contact Point (NCP) for FP6 IST. Mr Bognar has agreed to be the keynote speaker at my upcoming First Tuesday event (Jan 31). In the course of our discussion he offered a few insights about Hungary’s FP6 participation.
The good news, according to Mr Bognar, is that Hungary could well lead Central Europe in research and development in as little as two years. The caveat, of course, is that the region as a whole has a lot of catching up to do.
Continue reading ‘View from the NCP’s desk’
It is generally acknowledged that the 6th FPRD requirements and procedures are barely compatible with SMEs features, resources and constraints. Considering that rules cannot be changed, SMEs have to find their own way to overcome those barriers.
There are no magic tricks to guarantee the success of a project but there are some elements which can help to avoid failures or unpleasant experiences. Those coming hereafter may sound basic, but they already proved to be useful.
Continue reading ‘How can SMEs overcome the barriers of the 6th FPRD?’
This weblog and the CITT project
are co-financed within the 7th Framework programme
of the European Commission
Loading ...
Recent Comments