How can science reach the communities that need it the most and contribute to regional economic development? And how can researchers ensure that their work will generate an impact outside the scientific community?
Helping research initiatives lay a solid foundation for growth is essential for achieving strong societal impact and prosperous regions. And this is what our member META Group does within the Horizon Results Booster, an initiative of the European Commission.
Launched in 2020, the programme offers free of charge training services to teams of researchers on how to better exploit and disseminate research results, develop a business plan, and bring their innovative solutions closer to the market. The main objective is to support partners of EU funded activities that are eager to go beyond the end of their project life and maximize the value of their research results and innovations to address with novel solutions societal, economic and scientific challenges.
“One of the specific challenges was how to identify and create a portfolio of results suitable for joint dissemination, and eventually how to disseminate and boost exploitation potential of the many valuable research results developed in the project,” says Mika Kallio, ForestValue coordinator at the Finnish Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry. The project he coordinates aims to transform the European forest-based sector by improving resource efficiency, production and resilience, while promoting innovation and competitiveness. It launches transnational calls for research, development, and innovation to make these policy changes a reality.
By benefiting from Horizon Results Booster services, the project team explored activities to be undertaken in order to gain a new set of data and insights and a wider and more comprehensive view on its potential users.
“Progress of knowledge is essential for any community, these public investment programmes transform results into benefits for society, maximising the social, economic, technological, and scientific value of public funding, which is a must”, explained Andrea Di Anselmo, senior expert at Horizon Results Booster and META Group’s President. “This transformation is possible only if results are used, moving out of the R&D dimension and into innovation that reaches the market”, he added.
From Research to Market
Since 2020 when Horizon Results Booster was launched, over 400 services have been provided to closed or ongoing research projects funded by FP7, Horizon 2020, and Horizon Europe programmes.
Pioneering initiatives in green energy (GEO-DRILL, Tidal, Advanced Microturbines), cyber security (COPKIT), engineering (Excellerat), clinical research (SCENT), and many other fields have benefited from tailored support by requesting one or more of the programme’s three main services:
- The Portfolio Dissemination & Exploitation Strategy package for building greater capacity to disseminate research results and increasing the exploitation potential of a project;
- Business Plan Development helps beneficiaries to develop a business strategy including an analysis of the market and competitors;
- Go To Market provides support for product or service commercialisation.
“We always thought that once we had the technology, we would have the business, of course. But what kind of business would be best? What type of company do we want to be? Do we want to be an energy producer or a technology developer?” says Alejandro Marques of Magallanes Renovables. He is working on the OCEAN 2G project, which is building a giant ocean platform for tidal energy production.
The Horizon Results Booster services helped his team find the answers to those questions. OCEAN 2G experts learned how to identify different business risks, develop their business strategy, map out competition and collect financial information to further grow the project.
If you would like to know more about Horizon Results Booster or apply for services for EU funded research projects, please visit www.horizonresultsbooster.eu
