EUREKA Global Innovation Summit 2019
Innovating across borders for business growth
From 14 to 16 May, the UK EUREKA Chairmanship team organised the EUREKA Global Innovation Summit 2019 at the Victoria Warehouse in Manchester. The 2000 registrants from 45+ different countries, showed a clear interest in the EUREKA Programme. ITEA partners also highlighted the importance of ITEA in several sessions of the programme.
The EUREKA Global Innovation Summit was full of features, stages and showcases with over 50 sessions to choose from and most importantly, plenty of places to network and make valuable new connections. In addition to the conference programme, a diversity of side events took place at the venue. Among those side events the 10th anniversary of the EUREKA Korea Day, bringing together over 200 Korean companies, deserves special mention!
The EUREKA Clusters at EGIS
EUREKA Clusters are an easy step to take for SMEs, kind of a soft landing with a higher success rate without compromising in quality. We are making the process as simple as possible and learning as we move forward.
Tanja Äijö, Innovate UK
The Clusters were again well represented at this year’s flagship event. Together they organised several sessions and provided numerous speakers for the EGIS Programme. On Wednesday 15 May, InterCluster spokesperson Peter Connock, moderated an information session during which attendees could learn more about the Clusters. ITEA Chairwoman Zeynep Sarılar highlighted the Clusters advantages, while Rémy Renaudin, EURIPIDES² Operation Manager, went into detail on the Call calendars and SME engagement. Public Authorities Simon Haafs from RVO, Juana Sanchez from CDTI, Irina Slosar from FFG and Tanja Äijö from Innovate UK concluded with “why and how to apply for national funding support in Clusters”.
EUREKA Clusters are an easy step to take for SMEs, kind of a soft landing with a higher success rate without compromising in quality. We are making the process as simple as possible and learning as we move forward..
Tanja Äijö, Innovate UK
On Thursday, the session “Business Impact of EUREKA Clusters”, led by CELTIC-NEXT PR Manager Milon Gupta, demonstrated the positive impact of the EUREKA Cluster programmes in addressing societal and industry challenges and needs. Representatives from large companies, SMEs and research institutes shared their insights on the substantial (business) benefits they gained from working in Cluster projects. ITEA partner Martin Benedikt, Head of Co-Simulation & Software at the VIRTUAL VEHICLE Research Center showed how the Distributed Co-simulation Protocol (DCP), developed in the ITEA project ACOSAR, can save a huge amount of time & money and increase safety. Even competitors and non-funded partners collaborated in this project because of its importance.
During the entire event, attendees could get advice about the international funding landscape and the tools and instruments available to businesses at the Global Expert Bar. Representatives from all Clusters and other EUREKA Instruments were present to exchanges ideas on how organisations could best benefit from participating in EUREKA.
ITEA at EGIS
Several ITEA Community members were invited and they valuably contributed to the EGIS Programme. They also highlighted the importance of ITEA in several sessions.
Session ‘Shared Futures’
Joost Schut, Commercial Director at KE-works: "See it from the customer’s point of view, then you can make a difference!"
Customer orientation is also a strong pillar in ITEA 3.
Session ‘Futureproofing: The future of mobility’
Dirk Elias, Senior Vice President and Division Manager at Robert Bosch highlighted the role autonomous vehicles can play on the last mile, especially at the countryside. “Multimodal is important & it can make it easier to live at the countryside again.”
Session 'If Industry designed the Global Innovation Ecosystem'
As an expert in Innovation Management, Huub Rutten VP of Research and Application Development at Sopheon, shared his ideas on the session’s subject.
Session 'AI & Data’
Jop Spoelstra, Innovation Program Coordinator at Technolution, showed how the ITEA project M2MGrids was a core part in the developments of the smart grid and how big data applications can grow from reliable measuring sensing towards being more valuable to customers.
Session 'Futureproofing: Healthy Ageing'
In this session Casper Garos, Head of Public-Private Partnerships at Philips emphasised: “Look more actively into cross-sector and cross-country partnerships. Philips is in favour of Open Innovation & active in international collaborative research since the 80's. It's about learning from each other.”
Session 'Benefits of SME and Large Industry Collaboration'
Casper Garos, Head of Public-Private Partnerships at Philips explains how SME and Large Industry collaboration can to new business: "Ten years ago at the ITEA PO Days, a medical university research centre and an SME got us on board to work in the cloud. Nowadays these cloud health platforms are a core business for Philips."
Session 'Business Impact of EUREKA Clusters'
Martin Benedikt, Head of Co-Simulation & Software at the VIRTUAL VEHICLE Research Center, provided a strong testimonial on the protocol that was developed in the ITEA ACOSAR project that he led. This protocol saves a huge amount of time & money and increases safety.
ITEA project AVANTI finalist of EUREKA Innovation Award 2019
And last, but certainly not least, we are very proud of ITEA project AVANTI, that was one of the 5 finalists for the prestigious EUREKA Innovation Award 2019, handed out by the UK EUREKA Chair Tim Bestwick during the EUREKA Global Innovation Summit (EGIS) on 16 May in Manchester.
With this spot in the final, the EUREKA Network recognises that AVANTI has shown true innovation and a significant impact on economy and society on a global scale. The project was shortlisted as one of the 5 finalists from all EUREKA projects funded within the last 5 years (since 2013), across all EUREKA instruments. From these 5 finalists, EUREKA selected the projects Celtic-Plus project SIGMONA and EUREKA Eurostars project Kids4Life as this year’s winners.
On behalf of the AVANTI project leader Thomas Bär, Matthias Riedl from ifak, coordinator of the German sub-consortium, was present to receive the 'Finalists certificate' for AVANTI. Matthias Riedl: “We are very proud to be one of the finalists for the EUREKA Innovation Award 2019. This nomination recognises the outstanding results that came out of AVANTI. During the project we had an excellent collaboration and the results are the basis for ongoing and future research projects and bilateral collaborations.”. We congratulate AVANTI with this impressive achievement. You can check the AVANTI project video here.
SAVE THE DATE: EUREKA Stakeholder Conference 'Creating Ecosystems for Innovation' - 5 September 2019, Amsterdam
While the UK EUREKA Chairmanship is coming to an end, the EUREKA NL Chairmanship team 2019/2020 is already preparing the next EUREKA Conference. On 5 September (the day after the ITEA PO Days 2019), they will organise the EUREKA Stakeholder Conference in Amsterdam. More information about this event, which will be free of charge, can be found on https://english.rvo.nl/news/events/eureka-stakeholder-conference-creating-ecosystems-innovation. Registration will open mid-June.
