About Project

The EIT Regional Innovation Scheme (EIT RIS) was introduced by the European Parliament and the Council as part of the EIT’s Strategic Innovation Agenda (SIA) 2014-2020. The EIT RIS is designed to share good practices and experience emerging from the EIT Community’s activities, as well as to widen participation in KIC activities. The aim of the EIT RIS is to help disseminate the knowledge and know-how of the EIT Community and widen participation in the KICs across Europe.
The EIT RIS is designed for EU Member States and Horizon 2020 Associated Countries in Europe who are modest and moderate innovators, and where Innovation Communities have few or no partners. Strategically, the Scheme is an additional offer to these countries to facilitate their engagement with the EIT Innovation Communities. As such, the EIT RIS is not the sole method of participating in the activities of the EIT Innovation Communities. The Scheme’s aim is to facilitate the access to services and programmes offered by the EIT Innovation Communities.

Within the frame of the EIT RIS there is a joint project existing, in which all KICs participate. The Cross-KIC RIS project in 2020 aims to build on the knowledge, experiences and results of the cross-KIC collaboration since 2017. The project will remain to be a platform for knowledge-sharing and coordination between the
KICs to ensure efficiency and avoid fragmentation of efforts and duplication among their activities. In the framework of the Cross-KIC RIS project in 2020 there will be the following work package: “WP2 – Joint Innovation Incubator”. The lead of this work package is with EIT RawMaterials; participating KICs are EIT Health, EIT Food, EIT Manufacturing, EIT Urban Mobility, Climate-KIC.

The work package aims at enhancing the innovation capacities of RIS regions by establishing individual concepts for regional ecosystem effective university-based incubators based on joint knowledge transfer and individual concept development. Although universities and incubators often have access to local and regional ecosystems, the desired impact for them as local and regional innovation incubators remain low, and their impact to the surrounding ecosystems remain limited in most cases. With the right concept and appropriate support from all relevant stakeholders (including the multiple EIT KICs) universities can play an important hub and
multiplier function as innovation centres. Since there is no one-for-all “right” concept for building up a successful university incubator, but in individual activities we see many good examples; through a common work, discussion and knowledge transfer process, the most promising concept for each individual case can
be developed and implemented.

Thus, the Joint Innovation Incubator activity will aim on two things in parallel:

  1. jointly building the “right” particular concepts for ecosystem effective incubators, based on joint knowledge transfer and individual concept development together with the focused local ecosystems, that will enhance the innovation capacity of the effected regions;
  2. transferring KIC good practises of the Knowledge Triangle Integration around the innovation incubators from the concept phase on, thus making the ecosystems, which eventually should benefit from the innovation incubator, an integral part of it.

The work package will show a one-year concept phase, followed by a one-year implementation period.

Year 1 is dedicated to capacity building, knowledge exchange and concept development. In the frame of the kick-off meeting, a detailed work plan 1 will be drafted by all partners, containing the following tasks:

  • Analysis of current state of partnerships and already existing programs, gap and needs analysis
  • Incubation dedicated capacity building
  • Development/Enhancement of individual incubator concepts
  • Development/Enhancement of internal organisation of incubators
  • Implementation of enhanced strategy for acquiring start-ups
  • Development and implementation of external networking processes
  • Conception of a thorough communication and awareness strategy

Year two will focus on implementing the strategies and concepts developed in year one.

  • Implementation of processes based on new incubator concepts
  • Implementation of enhanced strategy for acquiring start-ups
  • Implementation of a 12 months pilot project
  • Development and implementation of a long-term strategy
  • Development and implementation of external networking processes
  • Conception of a thorough communication and awareness strategy
  • Evaluation of the first incubation program round after year2 and recommendations for improvement