Innovation

Measures to help revitalise our industrial production base have been identified in order to support innovation. This will aso contribute to deliver growth and jobs and kick start the economy

The main measures identified are:
•Substantial support will be provided for innovation activities directly aiming at producing plans and arrangements or designs for new, altered or improved products, processes or services. For this purpose they may include prototyping, testing, demonstrating, piloting, large-scale product validation and market replication.

•Significant support to demand side approaches will be another important feature, notably pre-commercial procurement (PCP) and public procurement of innovative solutions (PPI), as well as regulation to foster innovation and standard-setting to facilitate market entry or diffusion of innovations.

•It is foreseen that from 2015 a small number of Inducement prizes will be developed. These are used to spur innovation by setting a concrete, ambitious target without specifying the path to reach it.

•There will also be the piloting of new forms and sources of innovation with a focus on public sector, social innovation, as well as private sector services and products.

Boosting industry engagement through partnerships: There will be early implementation of innovation driven Public-Private Partnerships, which will leverage private investment for the development of key technologies and areas, aligned to the objectives of Horizon 2020, with a particular emphasis on systems integration, validation, piloting and demonstration activities.

In addition, priorities reflecting the strategies of the demand-driven European Innovation Partnerships, industry-driven European Technology Platforms and other stakeholder groups are important and will be progressed. These provide foci for greater resource efficiency and critical mass, synchronisation of developments and availability of tools. Importantly, the input provided by these groupings will help identify the content of the calls for proposals.

A reinforced effort for SMEs: SMEs will be the centre consideration in the development of the Work Programme with 20% of resources to be allocated across the "Societal challenges" and "Leadership in enabling and industrial technologies", either within projects or through targeted measures. In particular, the dedicated SME instrument, following a predominately bottom-up logic, will be introduced in order to address the needs of innovating SMEs.

The Commission has launched the next stage of the Eurostars Joint Programme, through a legislative proposal under Article 185, in partnership with Member States. This will target research and development intensive SMEs on a bottom-up basis.A robust system for on-the-ground support to businesses and SMEs in particular will be set up, entailing a close-cooperation between the National Contact Points and Enterprise Europe Network.

Providing access to finance :Horizon 2020 will help companies and other types of organisation engaged in R&I to gain easier access, via financial instruments, to loans, guarantees, counter-guarantees and hybrid, mezzanine and equity finance.As in the previous programmes, debt and equity facilities will be run in a demand-driven manner, though the priorities of particular sectors or of other EU programmes will be targeted if top-up funding is made available. The focus remains on attracting private investments into R&I.

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