Business to Science to Business in EMR+

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CHALLENGE OF THE PROJECT: - Allow more innovations to come to the market as new products in order to strengthen the SME companies’s business and to have a direct economical impact within the Euregio Meuse-Rhin area. - Enhance the crossborder valorisation of technologies and ideas that are currently waiting in the Universities’ laboratories or in the SMEs. In this regard, the Universities’ Technology Transfer Offices (TTOs) must adapt themselves to the new innovation environment and the context of valorisation, leading more SME companies into the laboratories and bringing innovation to the market thanks to open innovation and crossborder private-public collaborations. - Fit in a Triple Helix strategy with Knowledge institutions (KI), industry and governments. OBJECTIVES: - Develop/enhance the two-way exchanges between SME companies and KI of the EMR concerning R&D&I, to enhance the innovative strength of SMEs and make them more competitive. - Stimulate smart specialisation strategies by bringing more SMEs to the Universities in order to find solutions to their innovation issues via collaborations and co-creations with laboratories. For example, this concern SMEs that needs to adapt their technologies / products to new markets or to new customer requirements. - Support a crossborder valorisation of technologies coming from Universities of EMR at a Technology Readiness Level (TRL) of 2-3, through collaboration and co-creation with SME companies and industrial research institutions that will bring these technologies to a much higher TRL (4-5). - Support/enhance the innovation ecosystem of EMR+ by strengthening the innovation structure through intensive cooperation between SMEs and KI. - Professionalization of TTO, leading to a crossborder TTO network in EMR+. This network will allow an harmonisation of the way to do valorisation in the EMR, a higher visibility of the EMR Universities’ offer to the SME companies and to the other regions. EXPECTED RESULTS AND OUTPUTS: - Crossborder valorisation of many technologies. - New crossborder connections and collaboration partnerships (matchmaking event). - Rise of the professionalization level of the TTO’s teams. - Elaboration of a crossborder TTO network. ACTIVITIES: - Scout the technologies and innovations in SMEs and KIs. - Make more visible the wide offer of technologies. - Provide companies a ‘state-of-the-art’ in their domain with respect to available technologies, processes and applications, so they can decide to join existing projects or new innovation initiative - Match the best partners. - Support the new partnerships with administrative and logistics help. - Enhance the professionalization of the TTO teams. The focus in the project will be on Life Sciences, Digital Technologies and Advanced Materials.

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