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Testing of the ERA Hub concept – pilot phase

 

A vibrant ecosystem is an essential condition for growth. In order to take full advantage of possible synergies and complementarities between the EU and national and regional ecosystems for knowledge production, circulation and use, there is a need to make compatible and interoperable the policy frameworks that govern existing structures for knowledge transfer and sharing, and address common criteria for assessing work, processes and outputs. Reinforcing the networking interconnecting geographically or thematically, the ecosystem actors on the basis of smart specialisation and other strategic considerations, such as value chains, will consequently stimulate excellence and complete the coverage across Europe.

This action should build on the preparatory work of the previous Work Programme on Knowledge Ecosystems, which provides among others a mapping of existing ecosystem actors engaged in knowledge production, circulation and use across Europe, as well as designing the ERA Hubs concept as a toolbox of pre-defined common standards of work, processes and outputs, and key performance indicators on operational, programme and strategic impacts. The concept should be tested on collaborations, platforms, or other structures bringing together ecosystem actors, and increase networking between those structures in a coordinated approach, around a common agenda and compliance criteria. The rollout of the concept across Europe is expected to support and coordinate the efforts at local and regional level for the implementation of a pan-European ERA Hubs initiative.

The scope of this action is to pilot the ERA Hub concept with a limited number of ecosystems through implementation in countries and regions where knowledge ecosystem structures aligned to the ERA Hubs concept already exist, combined with countries or regions where an integrated place-based approach is missing. The main goal of the action is to fine-tune through experimentation the designed concept of ERA Hubs and its technical specifications and compliance criteria, share practices, as well as provide a toolkit of best practices and activities that ensure a strong basis for a potential scale-up in different geographies across the EU territory in the next phase.

Projects will be assigned to entities or networks of structures involved in knowledge production, circulation and use activities at European, national, regional or city level, which should take the coordination role in orchestrating the actors of an ecosystem working together to implement the ERA Hubs concept, in pursuit of intra-operability with the territorial ecosystem and a common agenda supporting the economic transitions and smart specialisation strategies, as well as job creation and skills development to better absorb talent in a country or region. These structures could be entities that have the competences and/or the willingness to become pioneers, benchmarks and ambassadors of the new concept and should include higher education institutions or their tech transfer offices, research institutes, business schools, private companies, not for profit organisations, or entities already part of pan-European networks or coming from different funding communities, in order to better connect those communities.

Support from institutional, regional, or national sources is highly encouraged (proven through e.g. letters of commitment), in order to make considerable progress in the deployment of the ERA Hubs initiative in the respective country or region.

The action should include the development of an independent monitoring mechanism to assess the progress of the ecosystem actors engaged in a common agenda and implementation of the ERA Hubs concept in a dedicated country or region. On the basis of the assessment, projects should also provide recommendations on how to deploy the ERA Hubs in different geographies and regions.