We are ready 4 the future!
The impact plan for ITEA 4
In this age where the importance of software is increasing tremendously and where globalisation provides huge opportunities, ITEA is ready to be at the forefront of Software innovation and Digital transformation in the global arena, building and enhancing on the basis of well-established roots!
Digitalisation is changing our lives radically; every object carries more and more software in its structure. Each and every organisation has an evolving need for software innovation to become more efficient, more effective and more resilient. Furthermore, the daily life of every human is more connected and digitalised. In addition, the resources of our planet are scarce and so they must be used with great care. These are the challenges that we face, and they can only be overcome by continuous and sustainable improvement of each process through innovation and collaboration among diverse industrial members.
Unique opportunity
Software innovation in B2C is being mastered by the USA while China is mastering big data analytics and management. ITEA presents Eureka countries with a unique opportunity to stay at the forefront of software innovation through establishing international consortia from 45 countries using a bottom-up approach.
While globalisation was often felt as a threat to local industries it should be regarded as a unique opportunity with markets becoming less and less protected, and continuous (open) innovation leading to the disappearance of such markets. Furthermore, the current COVID-19 crisis clearly shows the need to be able to react very quickly at a global level and underlines the importance of investing in open partnerships that bring large companies, SMEs, universities and research institutes to collaborate together. ITEA is a strong enabler in achieving this.
Instrument for fruitful partnerships
It is recognised that ITEA is a very successful R&D&I programme whose projects have a proven track record of impactful innovation, providing unique solutions to respond to the current trends and having the potential to impact society and the market. These successes have been made possible through the different ‘assets’ that have been built and validated within ITEA year after year:
- Dynamic ecosystem in which new members have come into the ITEA Community via highly recommended events and which has shown its capacity for creativity and openness towards international collaboration with a unique spirit of trust.
- Agile methodology, with a clear definition of the targeted customers, a focus on the importance of the market and technology value chain, a low level of bureaucracy and a high level of flexibility towards cooperation on new, industry-led topics.
- Toolset to support the methodology, including international customer workshops, coaching project reviews, project progress reporting, participation in customer-oriented, thematic fairs and Customer Advisory Boards.
- Effective and efficient Office that holds an ISO 9001 certificate of quality and a very rich, agile and stable information system that supports the ITEA Community in each process.
For ITEA 4, there is one purpose agreed by all stakeholders, to create impact to enable Sustainable Growth through Innovation
Enabling Sustainable Growth through Innovation through Collaboration
While co-building an innovative solution in each project, the ITEA Community accesses the powerful attributes of each Community member:
- SMEs bring out-of-box thinking, agility and flexibility
- Industry leaders / large industry companies enable big thinking, global impact and market access worldwide
- Research institutes and academia open doors to a deep knowledge base to go a step beyond the State-of-the- Art
Together they create the trusted openness of the ITEA Community and innovative solutions for real customers of industry. And, as crossovers, they can lead to new and unexpected innovations.
For ITEA 4, there is one purpose agreed by all stakeholders, to create impact to enable Sustainable Growth through Innovation, which is only possible through Collaboration.
ITEA 4 Scope
ITEA 3 has shown strong impact in many industries that are crucial for the economic and competitive position of our partners. Besides economic impact via employment growth, revenue growth and new investments, ITEA projects have delivered societal solutions and impact for the following key challenges:
- Smart cities
- Smart communities
- Smart health
- Smart mobility
- Smart industry
- Smart engineering
- Safety and Security
In addition to these challenges, which will remain key for future ITEA projects, an extra challenge has been defined for ITEA 4:
- Smart energy
These areas are closely related and contribute to two main challenges defined by many countries around the world for the coming decade: Sustainability/Green Economy and Digital Transition. The Digital Transition will contribute to many aspects of sustainability in society: not only renewable energy and power distribution, but also sustainable means of mobility, durable future concepts for health and more.
Mission
ITEA’s mission is to spawn innovative, funded projects of high quality that, catalysed by the ITEA label and coaching, deliver game-changing solutions through software innovation and ensure fast as well as long-term exploitation of results. ITEA wants to cover software innovation for the full stack, from user experience to embedded software and to self-innovate continuously to help the ITEA Community deliver new products, services and technologies in an efficient way.
Ambitions
The ambition for ITEA projects is to:
- Provide concrete global solutions with tangible results to tackle the urgent challenges and trends of society defined by international consortia to the benefit of all stakeholders
- Accelerate the sustainable growth of industry through innovative products, platforms and standards
- Push for new and emerging trends in software innovation including AI, Big Data, Machine Learning, etc.
- Create crossover innovations through ITEA’s open innovation Community and by cooperating with other Eureka Clusters
The ambition for the ITEA programme management is to steer R&D&I to achieve optimal impact starting from the concrete needs of customers, end users and society, and to support the sustainable growth of European enterprises. Therefore, it is ITEA 4’s ambition to enlarge its Community with stakeholders from the market in order to support this mission. They can be a determining factor for the added value of project results and the follow-up of project results.
ITEA 4 will build a global Customer Advisory Board for specific challenges and demands of a group of stakeholders, for customer validation and market introduction. It is in the customer’s interest to become aware of innovation trends and to identify the right partners that can solve their challenges. It is in ITEA’s interest to achieve impactful projects with fast exploitation.
Finally, ITEA 4 will strive to have a strong role in the Eureka Clusters Programme launched in July 2021. First of all, this means that ITEA 4 will remain an exemplary Community that fosters and strengthens the bottom-up approach by maintaining the so-called bottom-up single Cluster Calls, but also by facilitating and giving a bottomup colour to the Joint Calls. The Joint Calls will lead to new combinations between Eureka Clusters, and can also act as a springboard for newcomers to participate in single Cluster Calls.
ITEA 4 will commit to:
- Actively approaching new countries involved in the ECP Calls to become part of the ITEA Community
- Stimulating countries to allocate extra country budgets for the ECP Calls to support the thematic Calls over and above the single industry-driven Cluster Calls
- Implementing evaluation methods and schemes that result in a balance between high-quality proposals and a short time to contract; the organisation of Joint Calls is expected to increase this alignment and streamlining.
Building further on a strong legacy
ITEA 4 will build further on its strong legacy from ITEA 3, including its:
- Flexibility to maximise business results and impact
- Market-oriented way of working
- Inter-governmental approach
- Multi-dimensional concept of excellence for project selection
- Strong sense of an open Community, easily accessible by industry, SMEs and RTOs
- Unique coaching culture from industry
- Strong history of success stories as a basis of trust for the future
To further improve, ITEA 4 under the Eureka Clusters Programme will focus on:
- Continuously increasing customer orientation and accelerating market impact
- More support for innovative SMEs
- Better system overview
- Being a toolbox for Public Authorities and industry
- Joining forces with the Eureka Clusters
ITEA 4 will stimulate and boost innovative changes and partnerships that will further strengthen our international ecosystem and lead to massive impact and a leading position in Software innovation and Digital transition. ITEA 4 will actively push for cross-border, disruptive innovations in the new Eureka Clusters environment, in close cooperation with Public Authorities and other Eureka Clusters.
In conclusion, ITEA 4 will master the new massive trends in the market that help create wellbeing and sustainability in society.
Other chapters
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Editorial
By Zeynep Sarılar
Enhancing from established roots
Achievements and successes of ITEA 3
Online ITEA PO Days 2021
By and for the ITEA Community
ITEA Success story: ASSUME
Reducing bugs and false errors to boost efficiency
ITEA 4 styling
Fresh, flexible, global and dynamic
ITEA 3 measured in milestones
Some key moments highlighted
We are ready 4 the future!
The impact plan for ITEA 4
Customers are partners in our mission
ITEA Customer Advisory Boards
ITEA Success story: Reflexion
Nourishing high-tech manufacturing with valuable high-quality data
The Eureka Clusters Programme
The connections between Clusters and with Public Authorities create a stronger whole
Smart energy – a new challenge accepted!
Insights on the new ITEA key challenge and the 2021 customer workshop