The work performed during ACTTiVAte project can be broken down into four phases:
Phase 1: Regional and Technical Analysis of the Innovation Ecosystem
During this initial analytical phase that spanned during the first eight months of the project, the activities performed aimed at analyzing and defining the innovation ecosystem in which the call for proposal would be launched with the overarching goal of maximizing the relevance and therefore the impact of the innovation support services provided by ACTTiVAte.
Phase 2: ACTTiVAte Call for Proposal Development and Launch
Having analyzed the innovation ecosystem, this second phase of the project involved integrating the gathered inputs into a cohesive and clear call for proposal documents, leading to the launch of a successful call. This phase was finalized on June 1st 2017 (Month 12 of the project) with the achievement of one of the key milestones of the ACTTiVAte project, “The launch of the call for proposal”.
Phase 3: Call Closure, Proposal Evaluation and Selection of Projects.
After launching the call on June 1st 2017 all project partners disseminated the call details to interested SMEs. The call for proposal closed on September and it was considered a success in terms of participation with 138 proposals received. Consortium members worked very hard on developing and testing the flawless selection matrix spreadsheet including many entrepreneurship criteria to ensure the selection of the best possible SMEs. Between September 5th, 2017 and October 20th, 2017 the evaluation of the proposals took place. On October 24th and 25th, 2017 an Evaluation Committee Meeting took place to consolidate all evaluations and come up with a final ranking. Finally, after a quality check, all applicants were notified of the final results of the call. The next part was the development of the SMEs project finished with the SMEs deliverables D1, D2 and D3. The Technical Managers, Financial Managers and Project Officers were working in groups of three coordinated by the WP4 Leader giving the necessary support to the SMEs. All the work done was checked by the Quality Manager whose role was to control the quality of the deliverables produced by the SMEs.
This period was also used for creating few analytical reports based on the data collected. It was also the time for using communication and dissemination activities to promote not only the results of the project but the SMEs itself. All of that resulted in custom designed Final Conference widely disseminated and held at the biggest innovation event in Spain – Digital Enterprise Show 2019, being home for three days for the top innovative companies from Europe and the World. It was a time and place for our SMEs to showcase their innovations and utilize the time for valuable B2B meetings with the invited Investors.
Phase 4: Sustainability of the ACTTiVAte project.
Along with the development of the D7.6 Intermediated Sustainability Plan in May 2018 the consortium started to intensify the work on the sustainability of the project. Some strategic workshops have been held in MAC premises by the Management Team. Others were organized during the General Assembly meetings with all the project partners. The consortium discussed and developed many possible scenarios for the project development beyond its duration and created possible ways to sustain the project results. The possible sustainability scenarios were comprehensively described in the D7.8 Final ACTTiVAte Sustainability Plan are have been implemented since then.
