25 years of ITEA:
PO Days through time

“The ITEA PO Days started as a rather unstructured event but has grown into a well-oiled machine that clearly focuses on idea exchange and consortium building. A constant since the beginning is the added value for the participants. Most ITEA proposals are discussed and shaped at the ITEA PO Days, so attending this event is almost a must for parties that want to participate in an ITEA project. In addition, the PO Days are very open, so participants feel welcomed and embraced within the ITEA family. This ITEA family feeling makes the PO Days very enjoyable for the participants.

“My first experience with the ITEA PO Days was somewhere in 2001 for the ITEA 1 Call 4. In those days ITEA and the PO Days were focused mainly on the needs of the large industries. Since the large industries already had three successful ITEA Calls, they were not interested in having new projects in Call 4 and we had less than 10 registrations for the PO Days, resulting in a small Call. In order to balance the Calls we enlarged the focus for the PO Days to a larger audience, including SMEs and research centres. In the next two years we developed an approach of stepwise refinement for the ITEA PO Days. We started with a marketplace, the poster session, followed by the pitch sessions, brainstorming sessions and plenary feedback. This approach has been professionalised over the years and has led to a steady growth of ITEA with a strong Community.”

“HIGOE, a UK-based SME, is dedicated to creating an integrated health and social care platform for the elderly. As newcomers to ITEA, our journey of ideation, pitching, and networking across ITEA members has been remarkably streamlined, thanks to the user-friendly ITEA website and the excellent support from the ITEA Office in the Netherlands. Attending the PO Days in Berlin was a valuable experience, offering well-organised interactions with numerous individuals and organisations within ITEA. We look forward to future collaborations that will drive software innovation in partnership with ITEA.“ ”

"It was a real pleasure to attend the 2023 ITEA PO Days in Berlin. The organisation was stellar and the format of the two-day event allowed us to meet many potential collaborators and partners from across Europe and around the world. We were successful in joining a consortium and we've already begun working together to define a promising project outline that will not only benefit all countries involved but will provide new product and market opportunities for our company. It's remarkable to see how many exciting possibilities can come out of just a few days!" ”

“For Estonia it was the first time to visit the ITEA PO Preparation Days. We were on an exploration trip with five selected software companies to find out if the event and the ITEA Cluster programme itself would be valuable for our companies. And we were positively surprised. The event was very well organised and participants eager to collaborate. All of our companies got valuable contacts and were accepted as partners in different project proposals. As we allocated funding to our companies to participate in Eureka ITEA Cluster Calls this year, we hope that these newly made collaborations will soon also turn into good projects.”