Periodic Reporting for period 1 - INDUSAC (Quick Challenge-driven, Human-centered Co-Creation mechanism for INDUStry-Academia Collaborations)
Reporting period: 2022-09-01 to 2024-02-29
INDUSAC’s main objective is to develop and validate a state-of-the-art, Industry-Academia collaboration (IAC) mechanism; a simple, user-friendly co-creation process that allows to develop solutions that clearly addresses the needs and interests of companies, students, and researchers in the EU, with special attention to widening and associated countries. INDUSAC’s unique aspect is its focus on industrial research and innovation (R&I) and business challenges that connect industry innovators with students and researchers in an inclusive and territorially balanced manner. INDUSAC aims to solve 300 companies’ challenges, from numerous industrial sectors across the cross-cutting areas of circularity and general sustainability, digitalisation and industry 4.0 in only four to eight weeks.
Through the experience of supporting at least 300 transnational co-creation teams within the project lifetime, INDUSAC will be successively improved until the project end, delivering a tested mechanism ready for replication and upscaling. It is expected that INDUSAC will create a dynamic community of industry-academia stakeholders, including at least 1,000 companies, 3,000 students and 300 researchers by project's end.
Through the experience of supporting at least 300 transnational co-creation teams within the project lifetime, INDUSAC will be successively improved until the project end, delivering a tested mechanism ready for replication and upscaling. It is expected that INDUSAC will create a dynamic community of industry-academia stakeholders, including at least 1,000 companies, 3,000 students and 300 researchers by project's end.
In the reporting period, several deliverables within WP1 (Human-centred development of the INDUSAC co-creation methodology) were developed to achieve Objective 1, which is to develop a mechanism for co-creation between companies, students and researchers, such as D1.1 Baseline Report on Industry-Academia Co-creation Approaches, D1.2 Predefined Collaborative Approaches, D1.3 User Journey Maps and User Guidance, D1.4 Methodology beta version, D1.5 Methodology pre-validation report, and the Methodology itself (D1.6). Besides advancing towards achieving Objective 1, Milestone MS.2 First operational version of the methodology, was achieved in M14. Achieving Objective 1 will be measured by the satisfaction of users during the piloting phase.
Objective 2, which is to deliver an operational platform achieved its primary objective of defining, designing, developing, implementing, and maintaining the platform, which operated with an uptime of 99.674%. This progress builds upon the methodology, with milestones including defining the framework (T2.1) through several deliverables (D2.1: Platform technical information report, D2.2: Platform legal framework report, D2.3: List of technical requirements), prototyping (T2.2) incorporating deliverable D2.4 and pre-validation (T2.3) within which the beta version underwent successful closed testing (D2.5). User feedback was incorporated into the final version (D2.6). Achieving objective 2 will be measured with the operational version of the platform in the second year.
Objective 3 is to form a community of universities, students, companies, clusters and associations. To achieve this objectivewe have collected 35 Letters of Support from public universities. In addition, within WP4 (Dissemination, Exploitation & Communication) three deliverables were developed and submitted in the first year (D4.1: INDUSAC communication strategy and materials, D4.2: Project identity: brand, marketing basics and website, D4.3: Periodic KPI updates related to communication and dissemination: performance monitoring). There is already some partial measurement of the progress towards achieving objective 3. In the first round of piloting around 70 companies and 300 students/researchers were joining the platform. Overall, the successful completion of objective 3 will be measured in month 30 with the end of the piloting.
Objective 4, which is the piloting by supporting at least 300 co-creation projects, has started in October 2023. The call for companies and the call for co-creation teams were published on time. Till the end of February 2024 72 companies’ challenges were collected. Objective 5, which is to analyse the data from the piloting to demonstrate the effectiveness of the mechanism, will be measured in the second and third years through the optimisation of the methodology.
To achieve objective 6, which is to ensure all requirements for successful replication, expansion, and widespread use of the INDUSAC in a long-term, financially sustainable way, the piloting will enable to gather feedback from users and to prepare optimisation of the methodology (and measure objective 6). With methodology (D1.6) and deliverable D4.4: Exploitation plan: activities to be carried out have started.
The last objective, objective 7, is to accelerate students’ exposure to real business environments and to promote the upskilling of students’ transversal and entrepreneurial skills. To reach this objective, the teams should solve the challenges provided by the companies. When submitting the solution, students and researchers will provide feedback on the upskilling that will enable to measure the achievement of objective 7.
In addition to the above, all planned deliverables within WP5: Project management were developed, prepared and submitted on time, e.g. D5.1 Report of Kick-Off Meeting, D5.2 Project Management manual, D5.3 Risk management plan, D5.4 Annual progress report (this document) and D5.5 Innovation and open research data management plan with open science practices and gender dimension. Within the WP5 also a process for quality review and timely delivery of deliverables was developed and implemented (a concrete timeline with responsibilities is a part of deliverable D5.2). The process proved to be efficient as all planned deliverables were submitted on time.
Just before the end of the reporting period (in February 2024), the coordinator submitted a request for an amendment to the grant agreement. The main elements are the change of the FTPS funds implementation (from actual costs to a lump sum) andthe change of the dissemination level for some deliverables from public to sensitive.
Objective 2, which is to deliver an operational platform achieved its primary objective of defining, designing, developing, implementing, and maintaining the platform, which operated with an uptime of 99.674%. This progress builds upon the methodology, with milestones including defining the framework (T2.1) through several deliverables (D2.1: Platform technical information report, D2.2: Platform legal framework report, D2.3: List of technical requirements), prototyping (T2.2) incorporating deliverable D2.4 and pre-validation (T2.3) within which the beta version underwent successful closed testing (D2.5). User feedback was incorporated into the final version (D2.6). Achieving objective 2 will be measured with the operational version of the platform in the second year.
Objective 3 is to form a community of universities, students, companies, clusters and associations. To achieve this objectivewe have collected 35 Letters of Support from public universities. In addition, within WP4 (Dissemination, Exploitation & Communication) three deliverables were developed and submitted in the first year (D4.1: INDUSAC communication strategy and materials, D4.2: Project identity: brand, marketing basics and website, D4.3: Periodic KPI updates related to communication and dissemination: performance monitoring). There is already some partial measurement of the progress towards achieving objective 3. In the first round of piloting around 70 companies and 300 students/researchers were joining the platform. Overall, the successful completion of objective 3 will be measured in month 30 with the end of the piloting.
Objective 4, which is the piloting by supporting at least 300 co-creation projects, has started in October 2023. The call for companies and the call for co-creation teams were published on time. Till the end of February 2024 72 companies’ challenges were collected. Objective 5, which is to analyse the data from the piloting to demonstrate the effectiveness of the mechanism, will be measured in the second and third years through the optimisation of the methodology.
To achieve objective 6, which is to ensure all requirements for successful replication, expansion, and widespread use of the INDUSAC in a long-term, financially sustainable way, the piloting will enable to gather feedback from users and to prepare optimisation of the methodology (and measure objective 6). With methodology (D1.6) and deliverable D4.4: Exploitation plan: activities to be carried out have started.
The last objective, objective 7, is to accelerate students’ exposure to real business environments and to promote the upskilling of students’ transversal and entrepreneurial skills. To reach this objective, the teams should solve the challenges provided by the companies. When submitting the solution, students and researchers will provide feedback on the upskilling that will enable to measure the achievement of objective 7.
In addition to the above, all planned deliverables within WP5: Project management were developed, prepared and submitted on time, e.g. D5.1 Report of Kick-Off Meeting, D5.2 Project Management manual, D5.3 Risk management plan, D5.4 Annual progress report (this document) and D5.5 Innovation and open research data management plan with open science practices and gender dimension. Within the WP5 also a process for quality review and timely delivery of deliverables was developed and implemented (a concrete timeline with responsibilities is a part of deliverable D5.2). The process proved to be efficient as all planned deliverables were submitted on time.
Just before the end of the reporting period (in February 2024), the coordinator submitted a request for an amendment to the grant agreement. The main elements are the change of the FTPS funds implementation (from actual costs to a lump sum) andthe change of the dissemination level for some deliverables from public to sensitive.