Final Report Summary - ECO-PRO (Professional promotion of eco-innovative research results through a new media integrated platform for SMEs, research and the public) Executive Summary: Europe is a leader in environmental research but needs to accelerate uptake of R&D results to produce products, services and policies that will contribute to our economy and provide answers to societal challenges. The ECO-PRO project was an FP7 support action running from 1 September 2011 to 31 August 2013 that develdoped the so-branded «INNOVATIONSEEDS» initiative to address this problem: INNOVATIONSEEDS aims to maximise the value of environmental research with an innovative interactive platform (www.innovationseeds.eu) to raise awareness of the results of EU-funded projects. It also builds the first dedicated eco-innovation community of practice of its kind.The platform helps research teams, policy-makers, technology users and business leaders tap into cutting-edge research. Policy makers can find inspiration, too, for ways to reach their eco-innovation policy targets. To this end, the INNOVATIONSEEDS portal features over 150 promising R&D results from EC environmental research to accelerate their uptake as policy measures and market successes. The INNOVATIONSEEDS virtual library hosts “repackaged” results that are described in an understandable manner, using functional descriptors and classification according to commercial maturity. This maturity classification is done using the Technology-Readiness-Levels (TRL). For example, if you seek only mature environmental solutions ready for immediate market introduction, you’ll search for TRL 9 solutions, and you’ll currently find over 40 suggestions.Eco-innovative R&D results are communicated proactively using articles, webinars and video releases, supported by social media and brokerage events. The portal also provides an intelligent navigation system that links SMEs with relevant public and private funding opportunities for eco-innovation projects. Reach-out to target groups happens through the portal itself, via the magnifier science portal youris.com and its powerful multiplying partner platforms, through Linked-IN and Twitter, as well as through real-life promotion actions. 106 R&D results from 93 projects are featured in a virtual library after functional analysis. Projects are only mentioned as reference of origin; the focus is on useful pieces of knowledge that projects have created. These are described individually in a harmonised manner. This adds unique value for users who can search by user need expressed in technical functions understandable to everybody.100 journalistic articles about R&D results were written by professional journalists and published. Journalistic articles were viewed by 19,279 users on www.innovationseeds.eu and www.youris.com. They were taken up by professional syndicated sites AlphaGalileo, Cordis.Wire Phys.org WorldNews and Euronews and viewed there 386,920 times.3 video news releases (VNR) were produced about 3 very visual R&D results and distributed. VNRs were viewed 3,615 times on www.innovationseeds.eu and www.youris.com and 213,497 times via the syndicated sites. Euronews and Phys.org were the most important multipliers for the video news releases. The single most successful VNR was about the “Ecological Badminton Robot”: it got 184,228 hits.Social media: Through Linkedin, Twitter and Facebook, our content reached 6,668,563 people. Project Context and Objectives:ECO-PRO sets out to accelerate the market take-up by maximising the potential use value of R&D results through an e-dissemination process addressing their usefulness, usability and applicability for an eco-innovation community. Public funded research should benefit society to a maximum. This is especially true for environmental and climate research where successful market uptake is particularly urgent. Yet, society can only benefit from research results if these are transferred from laboratory to the markets as licensed technology or newly created company. However, it has been widely recognised that too few projects under both national and EU funded projects find their way to commercial exploitation.In this context, the Eco-Pro projects aims to maximise the value of environmental research with an innovative interactive platform: the INNOVATIONSEEDS platform. INNOVATIONSEEDS allows research teams, policy makers, technology providers and users to access and communicate about new eco-innovative technologies and knowledge. Moreover, INNOVATIONSEEDS uses social networking tools to promote and foster a broad-based eco-innovation community. Users can benefit from a virtual library of R&D results gathering the knowledge details of over 100 promising FP6, FP7 and CIP environmental research projects. The INNOVATIONSEEDS experts “repackage” the results: a novel method is proposed to structure the new knowledge generated by EC funded projects via an intuitive functional description. This packaging delivers knowledge in a functional way and highlights how R&D results might be used by a wide range of market players and policy makers.For the purpose of structuring the ECO-PRO project, its objectives have been broken down in eight sub-objectives and linked to work packages:1. To build and establish a dedicated open community involving more than 2,000 eco-innovation stakeholders in an interactive ECO-PRO platform (WP1)2. To facilitate the access to information about EU funded eco-innovation R&D results by designing and realising a single entry point in form of a portal build around a searchable database for the benefit of the entire eco-innovation community (WP5)3. To identify the most useful and exploitable public R&D results through extensive screening of at least 200 environmental R&D projects and outputs of the 6th and 7th Framework Programme (WP2)4. To package 100 R&D results in such a way that they become useable and ready for market take-up and dissemination (WP3)5. To boost and accelerate the uptake and promotion of eco-innovation R&D results through the design and implementation of state-of-the art innovative knowledge module, which make such results look acceptable to industrial players (WP4)6. To raise awareness of industry, and particularly SMEs, about the availability and accessibility of EU-funded eco-innovation R&D results aiming at least 1,000 ECO-PRO users per month (WP1)7. To increase the participation of SMEs in EU-funded research and innovation programmes by providing guidance on eco-innovation funding at EC level (WP5)8. To prepare the exploitation beyond the end of the project through monitoring and assessment of the dissemination impacts (WP6)Project Results:4.3.1 The INNOVATIONSEEDS portalThe central result created by ECO-PRO is the www.innovationseeds.eu portal. All other results are embedded in it.The portal was designed by youris.com Thrid Party IMG Internet using proprietory software for the content management system. A first version of the portal went online at the end of the thrid project month with the design, structure and preliminary content. It took until mid 2012 however, as expected, to fill the virtual library with content from project results.The portal was designed taking into account the objectives of the project and the methodology presented in the DoW. Starting from the identification of about 390 R&D results in the field of eco-innovation, the project described 106 interesting ones in form of “core” articles. These core articles has been collected in a searchable database named “virtual library”. To each described result was associated furher linked content: knowledge articles, journalistic articles, links to funding instruments used, as well as links to vidoes or webinars.A part from this first section, describing the research in eco-innovation, another section has to be implemented that was principally intended for the industry world, especially SMEs: a guide about the funding mechanisms and opportunities offered by the European Union. The portal was therefore designed to facilitate the access and fruition of the sections, to make users easily surf through the many and different contents and to maximize the exploitation of the work done both about the research and the funding opportunities. It was also decided that some areas of the website would be restricted to registered users: this would encourage people to register, forming the first core of the INNOVATIONSEEDS community. The portal provided the following features: the virtual library (the database of results), the funding guide (the database of funding sheets), the research news area (journalist articles), the Events area (calendar of the future events), the video area (VNRs and webinars), the community (a restricted area that allows people to subscribe the newsletter and to contact the project coordinators).4.3.2 Virtual Library of core articles on R&D resultsVirtual libraryThe virtual library is an integral part of the poral, but it deserves a distinct description as result.It is a database of articles about individual resarch results. It is possible to reach the results through a free search by keywords or through a guided search by functional descriptors of the result or by region.The guided search tool is based upon the functional description of the R&D results. It is composed of several scrolling menus providing a list of predefined keywords. The search will be carried out non-exclusively by looking for:• a specific field, i.e. a business sector;• a functional description of the result using a two-step process: global technical function and technical function unit;• a particular technique; and / or• a geographical area (where the solution provider is headquartered).The consultation of the virtual library is based on a search mode using keywords. These are constituted by the technical functions. R&D results are described in a functional way in core articles. The functional description will lead through this intuitive research to a batch of results matching with a first level of interest for end-users.A user searching for results that “separate” will look into the function “separating”. He will be shown different solutions for separation, i.e. “physical separating”, “chemical separating”, “mechanical separating”, etc. When chosing one, for example “physical separating”, he is proposed a list of R&D results in form of teasers of core articles, that present different solutions for physical separation, such as vapor extraction, ultrasounds, supercritical fractionation, etc. The users can then click on one of the teasers and is taken to the full R&D result description in form of a core article.Core articlesA core article is devoted to one specific R&D result. Its content provides the general description of the research output and refers to knowledge articles. The evolving nature of the content is a strong element of the model: information may be amended within a core article (depending of the evolution of the result, i.e. its technology readiness for instance). However, the backbone of the core article remains unchangeable and systematically contains a list of paramount information. 106 R&D results were described as core articles following the same homogeneous methodology based on functionality analysis. The methodology has been developed and therefore belongs to Greenovate! Europe Third Party TECHNOFI. It was transferred to all partners involved in describing R&D results, and then applied to the selected knowledge results from the environmental domain. The methodology is founded on the functional description of technologies stemming from Environmental R&D. The final result consists of a two-level functional description: unitary functions describing a simple action (the technical function units) are embedded into families of functions (called global technical functions). Technical functions represent entry points in the virtual library and stand for interconnected queries empowering a hypertext-like navigation.The data that constitute the backbone of every core article are the following: • Result title, • Project acronym: name of the EC funded project the result comes from, • Result overview: description of the result in 20 to 30 words using the two levels of the functional description, • Description of the technique: comprehensive description of the technology or the methodology provided by the research output, • Current state of development: description of the distance to market using the TRL scale, • Contact details: connection with the project coordinator and its organization, • Market perspectives: potential market target according to the project’s coordinator, • Geographical area of the provider, • Status of the Intellectual Property.Text and hyperlink example of Core Article below:Field: Damage-reducing techniqueGlobal Technical function: ManagingTechnical Function Unit: IdentifyingGeographic Area: SpainFIEMSER | Intelligent control systemThe project FIEMSER (Friendly Intelligent Energy Management System for Existing Residential Buildings), is developing an energy management system for buildings (BEMS) in order to decrease the energy consumption and increase the use of more sustainable energy sources. The technologies developed within the project are new and innovative elements in the field of damage-reducing techniques, designed to increase energy awareness and decrease the emissions of greenhouse gases. The intelligent control system (ICS) is one of the components in the BEMS system, used for making the control decisions of the BEMS to optimise the energy management of the building. The ICS will minimize the building energy demand, energy cost and CO2 emissions while managing local generation and energy storage. The ICS system is composed of three modules with a focus at different timeframes of the building energy use: The future, the present and the past. These modules allows the ICS to fill a number of functions: i) forecasting the energy demand and the intermittent local renewable energy generation of the building, ii) scheduling the operational plan of energy storage, generation systems and shiftable loads as well as monitoring the execution of this plan, iii) monitoring the users behaviour in order to suggest a more efficient use of energy in the building, iv) estimating the energy efficiency in the monitored building.i. The ICS uses external information and specific data to forecast the energy demand of the building during the present day (until midnight). The energy demand of the house is calculated through information on building-specific features such as isolation, windows, facades, hot water and lighting, daily activity etc. The external weather forecast provides the external information needed to make an appropriate prediction on the energy use. The generation of renewable energy is calculated using information on the systems connected to the building, such as area and orientation of solar panels etc., as well as weather conditions.ii. The forecasted energy demand and renewable energy generation is thereafter used in combination with information from other local energy generating units, energy storage facilities and energy prices in order to schedule the operation of these systems and loads within the house (such as washing machines etc). The system is continuously monitoring the plan, identifying deviations and making new plans if needed. The ICS is also sending operation orders to the components of the schedule at the right time.iii. The users in the building are monitored by the ICS system through an analysis of the current energy loads, comfort settings and building-specific data.iv. The energy efficiency of the building is calculated through comparing past energy use during the same operation context with the day-before-real energy consumption.The project within which the ICS system has been developed is funded under the Seventh Framework Programme of the European Commission (FP7), which is a grant funding programme, running for three years and will come to an end in 2013. As the project is still running and its outputs are not complete yet, the technology readiness level of the ICS system is currently estimated to be 3 on the TRL scale, according to the scope of the seventh framework programme, which provides public grant partial funding for R&D. The project is coordinated by the Technology Centre Tecnalia in Spain.Knowledge articlesKnowledge articles address a particular aspect of an R&D result. They consist in queries that are reachable through hyperlinks embedded in the core articles. 4.3.3 Funding Guide and The Funding Guide Search MechanismINNOVATIONSEEDS offers an intelligent navigation system to guide the user to the most appropriate public and private funding opportunities for eco-innovation, with an online helpdesk also available to help SMEs through the application procedure.Within the Funding Guide the users find a complete list of funding instruments. This list can be adapted to their own interests by applying different filters. If the users want to get more information, they click the corresponding URL and a complete description of each funding instrument will be displayed.The Eco Innovation Funding Guide provides a Search Tool based on descriptors like the Search Guided Virtual Library tool. 26 Funding Core Articles have been uploaded, classified and linked to existing related funding sheets. The search engine has the same user experience of the virtual library. A mechanism for selecting funding opportunities (search engine) was designed, making use of developed functional description. The funding search tool was organised around the main information provided by funding core articles, and therefore is composed of three tabs providing a list of predefined keywords. Moreover, it was decided to adopt a graphical interface similar to the Virtual Library search tool. Consequently, the search is narrowing by selecting:• a functional description of the funding mechanism, using a two-step process: global funding function and unitary funding function;• a technology readiness level, associated to a set of funding mechanisms; and• a geographical area (where the funding mechanism is available).Especially the TRL-funding opportunity link represents a very original aspect of the search tool. When searching criteria are selected, a list with all the matching funding opportunities (big programmes) is displayed. Each of the list components has a hyperlink for going deeply in their details (funding core articles). By following these hyperlinks, a funding core article describing these strategic funding programmes is displayed, including functional descriptors for enabling an intuitive crossed search. It should be noted that Virtual Library and Funding Guide get fully connected by these functional descriptors (especially technology readiness level).Funding sheetsIndividual funding opportunities are described in “Funding Sheets”. Each Funding Sheet provides information about different aspects of the funding: beneficiaries, funding intensities, topic information, etc. While each funding sheet differs, all contain the following fixed sections:• Summary: A brief description of the funding opportunity and its main objectives.• Funding body: a section naming the body which provides the funds (European Commission, National Governments, National Companies, etc).• Beneficiaries: this section describes which stakeholders can be eligible (Universities, Companies, Public bodies, etc), but also the countries were this funding opportunity is active.• Environmental Activities and Topics: a description of the involved topics of the calls was included (being environmental or not), but those with an eco-innovative scope were remarked.• Contribution, which involves a description of the funding, mainly the general type of funding (grant, loan, etc) and the typical intensity of funding. Some other information (additional requirements, budget limits, etc) could be added in this section, depending on the available information.• Cost Categories, where eligible costs are described.Additional links to specific websites are also provided to ease search of information where these details are not specified.Text example of Funding Sheet below:ECO-INNOVERA ERA-Net - Funding core articleECO-INNOVERA ERA-Net is a European initiative that focuses on supporting eco-innovation in research and development. The technology readiness levels covered by ECO-INNOVERA are 3, 4, 5 and 6 on the TRL scale.ECO-INNOVERA aims at supporting researchers, enterprises and environmental policy makers. The initiative provides best practices for research planning. Also, it facilitates access to trans-national research and funding with regard to eco-innovation. It also sets up networks for sharing information on eco-innovation throughout Europe. In this context, ECO-INNOVERA coordinates the various national and regional programmes from the European participating countries, thereby supplying access to grant funding or debt funding mechanisms, depending on national funding rules.Financial support takes the form of public grant partial funding for R&D or public loan funding for R&D. ECO-INNOVERA is supported by the European Commission’s seventh framework programme (FP 7) and several national organisations.The ECO-INNOVERA calls for proposals address multidisciplinary research projects covering processes, products and services with an holistic approach, i.e. encompassing technological, environmental and societal aspects. Topics cover activities such as: re-designing industrial products and processes, analysing the effects of large societal changes (climate change, resource extraction) or recycling/reusing wastes and water.Proposals must fulfill the following requirements:• The duration of the project should not exceed 36 months.• Sustainable benefits towards European business should be tangible within 3 to 5 years after the beginning of the project.• Projects should be collaborative, focusing on the trans-national aspect, i.e. gathering at least 3 different legal entities from at least 3 countries (except if a stakeholder is an SME: the minimum is 2 partners from 2 countries).The application procedure is carried out in 2 stages: firstly, a brief pre-proposal is submitted via the Electronic Submissions System (ESS); secondly, full proposals with complete information are submitted.ECOINNOVERA member statesThe list of European participating countries is provided below:• Austria• Basque country• Finland• Flanders• France• Germany• Luxembourg• Poland• Spain• Sweden• Switzerland• Turkey• Wallonia4.3.4 Audiovisual and journalistic materialWebinars The INNOVATIONSEEDS webinars aim to increase the understanding and the access of professionals, organisations, policy makers and SMEs to innovative environmental R&D. They are an innovative approach to information transfer that helps companies and interested stakeholders to find information and research results. Five webinars were published.The webinars on the INNOVATIONSEEDS portal are on demand. They have been recorded and made available on the ECO-PRO portal for exploitation by the INNOVATIONSEEDS community members. They are linked to the related article in the virtual library.Press and webarticlesA major service made available to the INNOVATIONSEEDS community was the production of web articles for large-scale distribution. A team of professional journalists produces articles and interviews about the eco-innovation projects and results. These were published on the INNOVATIONSEEDS portal, on the youris.com portal and were taken-up by other portals and media. Video News Releases (VNRs)A VNR is an audiovisual product targeting the general public. It is distributed through the main TV satellite gateways in Europe (the EBU and ENEX). The VNRs are composed of a 3-minutes edited teaser in English, for presentation and web usage, plus a 12-minutes b-rolls for editing without voiceover for TV broadcasting usage.The initial target of 3 VNRs was achieved. The following video news releases were produced:VNR 1: The Ecological Badminton Robot• Video News Release presenting the EU Project “ESTOMAD”• Filmed in Belgium• Edited to a Teaser (2 min 20 sec)• Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ibqWBO1ZzE • Edited to a B-Roll (10min 29 sec)• Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3sTomrVfr08VNR 2: Waste Cleans Up Oil Spills• Video News Release presenting the EU Project “CAPS”• Filmed in Slovenia• Edited to a Teaser (2 min 27 sec)• Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ibqWBO1ZzE• Edited to a B-Roll (8min 55 sec)• Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ksoFVTHbezUVNR 3: More Crop per Drop• Video News Release presenting the EU Project “FLOW-AID”• Filmed in the Netherlands and Greece• Edited to a Teaser (3 min 45 sec)• Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nb-eGZ6fo3U• Edited to a B-Roll (8min 58 sec)• Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SSf_DMHlCXMThe producers of youris.com Third Party Leonardo Film continuously contacted their network of European science journalists who were potentially interested in the VNRs produced for the Eco-Pro project.Research News100 journalistic articles on individual R&D results were written and published online and promoted. Written by professional journalists, the articles acted as teasers to introduce R&D knowledge to a wider non-expert audience.Below are some examples of article titles.- Edward Soméus – when animal waste provides greener fertilisersReducing the environmentally damaging fertilisers is one of the challenges of modern agriculture. A solution based on animal waste could be an option.- Bitumen roofing can be recycled… but isn’tWhy there are challenges in exporting a viable bitumen recycling process throughout Europe- Buildings rising from the ashesRecycling concrete from buildings that are no longer needed requires long-term thinking at the building’s inception- To be or not to be greenFinding out the big picture on environmental health is a challenge that can be met, thanks to a new integrated tool, as long as input data is reliable- More forest biodiversity for less money?Increasing the visibility over decisions relevant to preserving forests can improve the ability to get the right mix of economic instruments used for forest conservation policy. But change is slow.- Is desertification on the increase?Fighting desertification will require a better understanding of the drivers of this process, with a little help from a new tool to study how dry regions evolve- Juggling with multiple risksScientists are developing methods and tools that look at multiple natural hazards and how they interact to be in a better position to deal with their consequencesPotential Impact:4.4.1 Audiences impactedThe Europe-wide INNOVATIONSEEDS initiative to accelerate the uptake of environemtal R&D results has impacted a number of different audiences:Business communities, technology providers and potential technology users, including industrial end-users and SMEs for exploitation through licensing agreements for exploitation of the R&D results through start –up creation. The stakeholders and intermediaries of the eco-Innovation domain at large. Today, all industry sectors have to become eco-innovation sectors. Almost any sector from food and drinks, agriculture, transport, construction to electronics needs to save resources such as energy, materials and water; to recycle and re-use and to apply life-cycle design for sustainable products. TV and media professionals, including commissioning editors, journalists, producers, and all those people coming across the INNOVATIONSEEDS audiovisual production for professional reasons through the project’s distribution and broadcasting mechanism. TV professionals constitute an active project audience, as they are requested to carry on the project messages (and project’s audiovisuals) towards their programming segments. The value of the project’s impact on this audience is higher than for the general public. INNOVATIONSEEDS has contributed to publicise the European Research Area and its actors to the media; raise awareness on specific research themes; enrich professionals’ knowledge base about a given subject or issue; enhance their perception and their understanding about the European research on Environment; provide them with new, original material suitable for broadcasting, and well as with topical hooks for future own developments of TV programs.On-line communities. The INNOVATIONSEEDS output went online in may ways: its own portal, the social networks, through syndicated sites that took up our content, and through uncontrolled web dynamics. This online presence enabled continuous, on-demand access to project’s modules to potential users. Web users belong to both professional categories and the general public. On-line availability of project resources has thus facilitated better understanding of our subjects.The civil society at large was involved in the project’s communication process in two main ways: as TV watchers, through the youris.com platform and the TV programs, and as visitors of one of the websites where the project results will be made available. Through the project, the general understanding in environmental research and researchers’ lives was enhanced, the vision of research and researchers at large was valorised through numerous possibilities to learn about the excellence of “what Europe is doing” in environmental research. The Commission services. All Directorates, Units and Agency Units involved in environmental research, innovation and policy making.4.4.2 Types of impactPromotion of EU environmental research to potential users and the general publicThe project served to promote the available results coming from public-funded environmental research at European level. It was available to the Commission services as showcase of excellent knowledge outputs already created through EC funding in a number of thematic sub-areas falling under the environment topic. This showcase was used to show newly starting projects in the areas of waste and resource efficiency what was already done in their domain, and how they could promote their own results. The EC can now that the portal is filled with results that are described with great care also show it to non-EU contacts when talking about European environmental research. INNOVATIONSEEDS’ concentration of knowledge results from similar areas creates critical mass; and critical mass draws attention of users who wish to browse for options. It thus increases the exploitation potential of the individual projects. The gain of visibility has other implications, directly linked to future research developments. Experience shows that successful communication might be used by research and business organisation as an internal marketing instrument to convince their management to keep on investing resources in their research areas.The results-pooling also enhances transparency in Commission operations. One of the most frequently asked questions by the European citizens about Europe is: “how does Europe spend my money?” This is not a naïve question: EU RTD Programmes, funded with several billions euro, are very often perceived by people as inaccessible black boxes. Public opinion simply doesn’t know how this money is being spent by the Commission. The creation of public awareness and high-level communication actions like INNOVATIONSEEDS is indeed a very straightforward instrument to increase transparency of Commission mechanism and operations.The communication and dissemination strategy of INNOVATIONSEEDS relies on a portfolio of directly controlled portals, external media and the intensive usage of socials. The content published by youris.com is automatically shared and published on other platforms (e.g. Cordis.Wire AlphaGalileo, Phys.org and WorldNews), therefore multiplying the impact and the audience of this content. In addition to portals where syndication agreements are in place, many other websites and portals took-up the news articles published by INNOVATIONSEEDS. Coordination of environmental researchBy bringing together families of projects belonging to the environmental area INNOVATIONSEEDS contributed to the co-ordination of results of RTD projects and to highlighting the most promising achievement in the domain. Pooling and joint presentation also facilitates mutual understanding by projects participating in the European research activities and improves the exchange of knowledge on environmental issues.INNOVATIONSEEDS is also an instrument for enabling better co-ordination of dissemination, exploitation and communication activities. The creation of an integrated entry point to media and business communities guarantees a univocal, quality-checked approach and facilitates co-ordination of dissemination and communication activities by the Commission Services.4.4.3 Impact indicators and numbers achievedThe information collected and analysed in Task 6.1 is largely quantitative and was elaborated by applying automatic tools that collect and monitor reliable statistics also from external platforms and socials. These tools offer the unique opportunity to make an estimation of the multiplying effect arising from web and the overall outreach of content. These metrics, however, being collected in an automated way, do not allow the segmentation per users groups that had been originally envisaged and that proved not to be applicable as such.The collected data are nevertheless very meaningful in illustrating the mechanisms through which users access and use the various knowledge modules. This information is particularly relevant in sight of the developments of the INNOVATIONSEEDS site portal, the activity of which will carry on through the greenXpo project (EC funded project, GA 603696).The data reported in D6.1 indicate that the ECO-PRO consortium successfully reached the goal of involving a large community of users (2 746 by the end of the project), facilitating the access and fruition of the different contents and modules, so maximizing the exploitation of the work done both about the research and the funding opportunities. INNOVATIONSEEDS can rely on an active community made up of about 645 individuals with a strong involvement and 2,101 with a medium engagement in the activities and debates. In addition, more than 13,000 people came “passively” in contact with the INNOVATIONSEEDS content and more than 6.5 millions possibly came across it. Such data fully match the outreach objectives of the project and pave the way for an even more successful deployment in the future.With regard to aggregated and average data, the website has a total of 13,762 visits over 16 months of activity, that makes an average of 860 visits per month, comprehending the first months of lower traffic. The average traffic since after the startup phase (from January 2013) has been of 963 users per month.The content of the website, at first not widely known to the public, has been arising constant interest and the popularity of the portal is constantly growing. The indication of the average duration of a visit from search engine (1:59 minutes) is quite high and shows that generally users found on our website exactly what they were looking for in their research on the engines. The most used incoming links to the platform is LinkedIn: the sharing of articles on the LinkedIn group of the project has been quite successful and raised quite a good level of interest among its participants. Out of the content modules, the Virtual Library accounts for 42% of the visits.The youris.com portal acted as a multiplier, both directly publishing articles and VNRs and exploiting a number of syndications agreements built over years. The youris.com portal recorded 10,808 overall visits to the INNOVATIONSEEDS articles, more than double the INNOVATIONSEEDS ones, 4,152 overall. On average, each article recorded 130 visits on youris.com and 58 on INNOVATIONSEEDS. The content published by youris.com is automatically shared and published on other platforms (e.g. Cordis.Wire AlphaGalileo, Phys.org and WorldNews), therefore multiplying the impact and the audience of this content. In addition to portals where syndication agreements are in place, many other websites and portals took-up the news articles published by INNOVATIONSEEDS. 100 journalistic articles about R&D results were written by professional journalists and published.Driven by the social media, the partner portals and the newsletters, overall visits to the articles were very good: on average, each article had 140 visits on youris.com and 51 on INNOVATIONSEEDS. The figures for syndicated take-up are much higher recording respectively 51.872 6.484 and 210.720 for Alphagalileo, Cordis.wire and Phys.org.Targets both for the number of articles and the expected outreach were fully achieved, as thoroughly illustrated in D6.1.Journalistic articles were viewed by 19,279 users on www.innovationseeds.eu and www.youris.com. They were taken up by professional syndicated sites AlphaGalileo, Cordis.Wire Phys.org WorldNews and Euronews and viewed there 386,920 times.3 video news releases (VNR) were produced about 3 very visual R&D results and distributed.VNRs were viewed 3,615 times on www.innovationseeds.eu and www.youris.com and 213,497 times via the syndicated sites. Euronews and Phys.org were the most important multipliers for the video news releases. The single most successful VNR was about the “Ecological Badminton Robot”: it got 184,228 hits. By television, the three Video News Releases were taken-up 44 times by 33 different TV stations.The Ecological Badminton Robot was a quite successful video: it was broadcasted by 22 channels, mostly due to the theme, that includes Badminton, an argument of general interest. Also More Crops per Drop was received quite well, while Cleaning Up Oil Spills did not perform as well, probably due to the difficulty from the general public to grasp the innovation presented. Overall, the outreach targets for the VNRs were fully achieved.Social media: The contents of INNOVATIONSEEDS was seen by at least 9,112 people on Facebook. It was shared many times (not countable) on LinkedIn. Twitter followers shared our content 8,152 times with a potential audience of 6,668,563 people overall.4.4.4 Dissemination activitiesECO-PRO is a science promotion project. The entire INNOVATIONSEEDS initaitive is about dissemination in view of better exploitation. As such, the entire work plan was designed to ensure appropriate and leading-edge communication to the involved audiences. Besides the core result, which is a dissemination portal as such, a number of other activities not described under S&T results were carried out to enhance the impact.Promoting the community via newslettersTo draw attention to the portal and its R&D results, a newsletter was designed in INNOVATIONSEEDS look and feel for distribution to the over 2000 contacts of the database of eco-innovation stakeholders that had been assembled.Four newsletter issues were emailed on a monthly basis, starting in April 2013 and ending in July 2013. They were arranged around thematic groups. For example, the newsletter no. 2 from May 2013 was dedicated to material recycling. Promoting the community on TwitterAll articles published on the portal were also promoted on INNOVATIONSEEDS’s Twitter account. A total of 487 tweeds were published to a total of 155 followers by October 2013.Deliverable D6.1 provides details on the impact of the use of the social media for the reachout to eco-innovation stakeholders.The screenshot below shows the branded Twitter account and its regular activityPromotion the community on LinkedinLinkedin was heavily used to push content from the portal to potential users. The community was grown through personal contacts and through tailor-made content promotion to individuals based on their known personal interest. All articles published on the portal were also promoted on Linkedin.Not only the own group Green Knowledge for Industry and Politics was used to post content; cross-posting into other Linkedin groups with stronger membership regularly also drew their attention to our content. Groups regularly used for cross-posting were:• Sustainability professionals (72,480 members), US-owned• Waste & recycling professionals (33,368 members), US-owned• ECO-INNOVERA (381 members), EU-owned• Cleantech innovation area (224 members), EU-ownedPromotion of portal at relevant stakeholder eventsThe ECO-PRO project and its main tangible result to the outside, the www.innovationseeds.eu portal has been promoted extensively during the project lifetime, and will continue to be promoted beyond.Below is a list of occasions where presentations were made:• Green Week 2012, 25 May 2012, Brussels• Info day FP7 ENV, 11 June 2012, Brussels• Eco-Clusters conference: Drivers for regional growth & internationalisation, Open Days, 10 October 2012, Brussels• G! E General Assembly, 5 December 2012, Brussels• European Meeting of R&D&I on water, 28 November 2012, Spain• Rencontres Eco-Entreprises 26 March 2013 in Rennes (FR)• DG R&I Workshop on exploitation and commercialization of research results of multinational consortia, 29 April 2013, Brussels• ENTSO-E and EDSO4SG workshops, several meetings, spring – summer 2013• FIDIAS Transnational Expert Workshop 13 June 2013 in Milan• Kick-off meeting of greenXpo, 26 June 2013, Berlin• ECOPOL Conference Accelerating eco-innovation policies, Athens, 22-23 October 2013• DG R&I Joint Kick-Off Meeting for Research Projects on Turning waste into a resource through innovative technologies, processes and services selected under FP7-ENV-2013-two-stage call, 6 November 2013, Brussels4.4.5 Exploitation of foregroundsThe ECO PRO project has developed two key results that have a business potential: • a methodology to structure, package and share existing publicly-funded R&D knowledge, adopting a functional perspective. This methodology has been called “Knowledge3” in view of its exploitation,• a knowledge sharing e-platform, INNOVATIONSEEDS, which brings together stakeholders from diverse horizons sharing a common interest in eco-innovation processes and results. This web portal contains a virtual library of publicly-funded R&D results organized according to the Knoweldge3 methodology. This library represents the distinctive feature of the web portal. These results pave the way to two different routes for commercial exploitation, i.e. a process offer and a product offer:• Knowledge3 can be replicated considering other fields of applications encompassed by the eco-innovation process: a service offer must be validated around the core activity of knowledge packaging and sharing. A ‘replication test’ is under way in the electricity smart grid field (EC supported Grid+ project), so as to validate the robustness of the envisaged business model principles.• INNOVATIONSEEDS is a prototype product per se, which is a stepping stone to develop brokerage services typical of eco-innovation, i.e. connecting R&D supply and demand in the eco-innovation community. It is argued that the exploitation of this prototype requires a two-step approach:1. enlarge the scope of INNOVATIONSEEDS to cover the widest possible spectrum of new knowledge pieces needed to embrace the whole field of eco-innovation. Such web portal enlargement will be implemented within the EC supported GreenXpo project (EC funded project, GA 603696),2. segment, if required, the INNOVATIONSEEDS portal into dedicated value chain portals that gather more specialized industrial communities if this reveals the best way to maximize the customer base for a safe commercial exploitation.Both the “process” offer and the “product” offer are detailed in the related confidential deliverable.List of Websites:For more information• Interactive portal: http://www.innovationseeds.eu • LinkedIN groups: Green Knowledge for Industry and Politics group: http://www.linkedin.com/groups/Green-Knowledge-Industry-Politics-4627735?gid=4627735&trk=hb_side_g • Twitter: InnovSeedsCoordinator contactKatharina KrellManaging DirectorGreenovate! Europe EEIGRue d’Arlon 63-65 – 1040 Brussels – BelgiumKatharina.krell@greenovate.euTel +32 2 400 10 05 - Skype: krellkat Documents connexes final1-eco-pro-final-report.pdf
