• A detailed desk research on the 3000+ companies from the wider EIC universe was conducted.
• A Selection Committee composed of 32 highly experienced experts was formed.
• The top performing EIC backed companies were chosen by the Selection Committee in a several-rounds selection process.
• Fifty outstanding companies with the highest growth and financial potential were shortlisted (with focus on country and gender balance and domain expertise). TOP50 Listing was published.
• Awareness sessions were held to present the scaling programme to these companies. As a result, 37 companies were onboarded to the EIC Growth Club, while initially 30 were foreseen to join.
• A needs interviews’ questionnaire was developed, grounding on the four fundamentals for growth (Scaling People - talents & culture, Financing growth, Market access and partnering for growth). And 37 companies and 52 investors were interviewed.
• The key account teams for each EIC Growth Club group were set and the EIC Growth Club was officially launched in early 2022. All planned advisory and growth sessions were conducted at the end of the EIC-ScalingUp project.
• Experienced external experts were recruited and allocated to the companies, matching their expertise and experience with the companies' needs.
• An Individual action plan was developed for each company out of the collaborative growth and the individual advisory sessions.
• EIC Growth Club companies were promoted on the EuroQuity platform and a Roadshow plan of events calendar was drafted and implemented to allow each of the supported companies to connect them with relevant investors and partners. The implementation of the Roadshow plan started already during the first reporting period but the bulk of the events took place during the second reporting period.
• The EIC-ScalingUp Communication plan was developed to set the guidelines for all communication and PR activities of the project.
• A successful communication campaign was set on social networks that gained a good number of followers.
• An Ambassadorship strategy was drafted – to be used as a key instrument for engaging and motivating the target audience and for promoting the project.
• A detailed editorial plan was developed following the guidelines of the Communication plan.
• Communication channels were established among the project partners to easily coordinate, exchange ideas, and plan activities (Slack, emails).
• QC&QA strategy was set up to ensure that high-quality results and satisfaction are achieved. Based on that a quality review was performed by the respective QC&QA partner before the submission of each deliverable.
As a result of the activities, exactly a year after the TOP50 publication was released by the EIC-ScalingUp consortium, an impact monitoring showed that from end of October 2021 until October 2022 the companies listed in the TOP50 had raised an additional € 545 million of which 89% was done by the EIC Growth Club Members with IQM, SMART Photonics and Lightyear leading the transaction volumes. An update 6 months later (with data from February 2023) showed that the Top50 companies had raised additional 662 million Euros since the start of the scaling programme.
Furthermore, three innovation agencies showed interest to benefit from the lessons learned and to adopt some of the blueprint produced while supporting the 37 companies which joined the scaling programme.
