The EIC and EIT signed a Memorandum of Understanding to increase collaboration between the two innovation powerhouses.
The European Innovation Council (EIC) and the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT) signed an agreement to collaborate on common objectives – increase the performance and potential of innovation in the European Union (EU). The two biggest EU innovation initiatives within the next research and innovation framework programme Horizon Europe declare their commitment to develop synergies by exploiting their complementary structures and their respective focus and know-how. This will lead to European innovative entrepreneurs receiving better support in their field and having access to a wider innovation ecosystem.
The Memorandum of Understanding contains the signatures of Gioia Ghezzi, EIT Governing Board Chair, Mark Ferguson, EIC Advisory Board Chair, Jean-David Malo, EIC Taskforce Chair, and Martin Kern, EIT Director. Both organisations, EIT and EIC, will map out and implement together a full-scale systemic and structural cooperation. The intention is to design a one-stop-shop for European innovators, innovative startups and SMEs, higher education institutions, and research universities.
Concerning the complementarities, the EIT offers academia and industry players, both large and small, support for integrating the Knowledge Triangle (education, research, innovation), building thematically focused ecosystems and innovation capacity. On the other side, the EIC will accompany startups and SMEs in scaling up, and support innovative research institutions (universities, industries, research organisations) in developing emerging technologies. Whereas the EIC mainly seeks to foster disruptive innovations in a bottom-up manner, the EIT Knowledge and Innovation Communities seek to bring together entrepreneurs, academia and industry in strengthening ecosystems around a focus area. Both innovation powerhouses intend to complement each other while avoiding gaps and duplications to provide the best service for its partners.
With regard to the foreseen collaboration, the EIT will work with the EIC on methods to identify innovators that comply with the requirements for the EIC Accelerator funding. The EIC will then help the EIT to implement “Fast-Track” access to the Accelerator programme for promising start-ups and SMEs. Furthermore, the EIT and EIC will provide mutual and reciprocal access to advisory services and networks. They also intend to invest jointly, when needed, in innovators. Other areas of collaborations include the support of women innovators by sharing experience, supporting regions with modest innovation capacity, and exchanging results on transition of research to innovation.
The cooperation overall will be overseen by a permanent Working Group, which will be composed of members from the two advisory boards. At least three members of the EIT Governing Board and the EIC Advisory Board will come together in this jointly Working Group to oversee the implementation process, identifying opportunities to strengthen the collaboration and informing their Boards.
This Memorandum of Understanding follows the Letter of Intent from September 2020 between the EIC and three of the nine Knowledge and Innovation Communications (KICs), EIT Climate-KIC, EIT Digital and EIT InnoEnergy, which sought to improve the support for “game-changing innovators and entrepreneurs”. This will be extended to all other KICs as soon as possible. Moreover, the Programme Managers (PM) of the EIC should interact closely with the EIT and the KICs on relevant matters regarding their portfolio.
The EIC as well as the EIT are part of the Horizon Europe’s third pillar. Whereas the EIC started off as a pilot under Horizon 2020 and is now a fully-fletched entity in Horizon Europe, the EU created the EIT in 2008 in order to strengthen European’s innovation capacity. Both EU bodies aim to accelerate European entrepreneurship and innovation by supporting startups, SMEs, students and research institutes in their own way.
The EIT activities have recently expanded further. Two of the KICs, EIT RawMaterials and EIT Manufacturing, joined the EU’s new Secretariat of the EU Environmental Technology Verification (ETV) Programme. The Secretariat aims to support circularity and a clean production process by promoting the verification of green technology.