Digital Innovation Hubs boosting European Microelectronics Industry

Project Information

DIATOMIC

Grant agreement ID: 761809

DOI

10.3030/761809

Project closed

EC signature date 15 June 2017

Start date 1 September 2017

End date 31 August 2020

Funded under

• INDUSTRIAL LEADERSHIP - Leadership in enabling and industrial technologies - Information and Communication Technologies (ICT)

Total cost

€ 7 087 506,25

EU contribution

€ 6 267 643,75

Coordinated by

NETCOMPANY SA
Belgium

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - DIATOMIC (Digital Innovation Hubs boosting European Microelectronics Industry)

Reporting period: 2019-03-01 to 2020-08-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

Our times are witnessing the far-reaching changes of the fourth industrial revolution, driven by digital technologies. To avoid losing €600 B annually, due to slow digital transformation, the EU has to seize the benefits of the Single Digital Market and create a smart economy based on digital innovation. The digital revolution entails that all sectors in all countries benefit from digital innovation by enabling higher value products with "digital inside", increased efficiency through digitization of processes and/or reshaped business models.
SMEs and mid-caps from all sectors face several challenges. They have limited knowledge of what smart electronics and smart systems can do. They also lack easy access to diverse competencies, primarily technological and scientific, but also competencies regarding business development and market access. While these competencies often exist locally or abroad, they find it difficult and costly to search, find and connect with the relevant players and the resources/competencies they possess. Even when digital innovation is undertaken, companies must face the valley of death to reach TRLs of 7 or higher. One reason for this is the inability to reach critical market mass.
DIATOMIC establishes a sustainable ecosystem to facilitate AME/SSI-based innovation in the health, agrifood and manufacturing sectors, all of which are under-digitized and of prime importance for society and the economy. DIATOMIC ecosystem draws from the advanced technological excellence of the DIATOMIC consortium to execute three sector-specific cross-border Application Experiments to help technology adopters, end-users and smart solution developers realise tangible benefits of digitization. At the heart of the ecosystem, three interconnected sector-specific Digital Innovation Hubs (DIH) pulsate to accelerate digitization in-beat with sector-specific needs, and to enable delivery of AME/SSI based applications to a critical mass of customers. DIHs first assist non-tech companies to couple with counterparts across the EU with complementary technological competencies. Then, acting as a one-stop-shop, they offer the teams (i) strong technological support to accelerate design, development, prototyping and manufacturing and (ii) business support to develop solutions with a robust product/market fit.

To realise its vision, DIATOMIC has defined a set of specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound objectives:
Obj #1: To execute three cross-border PUSH application experiments exploiting DIATOMIC partners` technological competencies and use them to ignite digital innovation thinking in non-tech SMEs, to push AME/SSI technologies
Obj #2: To establish three DIHs to spread AME/SSI technologies to an equal number of economic sectors: the critical health sector, the vital agrifood domain, and leading EU industry 4.0 manufacturing SMEs. DIATOMIC DIHs connect any actor of the value chain of the targeted sector with large numbers of Competence Centers (CCs) from different EU countries.
Obj #3: To attract the most talented and knowledgeable innovation consortia to the open calls to execute +15 experiments of high-quality with highly-innovative user-driven applications based on AME/SSI technologies.
Obj #4: To ensure post-project sustainability and growth of the DIATOMIC ecosystem.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

Towards the objectives DIATOMIC has achieved
Obj #1: To execute three cross-border PUSH application experiments (in agrifood, in health, and in manufacturing) exploiting DIATOMIC partners`technological competencies in five countries: Serbia (Agri), Greece (Agri), Germany (Manufacture), Spain (Agri, eHealth, Manufacture) and Portugal (eHealth).
More than 200 people joined our webinars and we have had in total 387 participants during the Coimbra Sustainability Summit (2 weeks of webinars) that was financed by the project. In total more than 600 people participated in our events.
Obj #2: Three DIHs were created in Health, Agrifood and Manufacturing with 433 members. From them 264 are Competence Centers from different EU countries and 169 are SMEs/MidCaps
Obj #3: 17 experiments with 44 partners were funded. 8 experiments were funded from Open Call #1 where we received 85 applications (with 198 applications started) and 9 from Open Call #2 where we received 175 applications (with 369 started). From the 44 partners, 29 were identified as SMEs and mid-caps and 1 as SME-Competence Centre.
Obj #4: The average increase of the experiments’ technologies in the TRL scale, during the program was 3 levels with an average of 2.4 early adopters. At least 15 companies expressed their interest in using DIATOMIC services also post project. DIATOMIC informs experiments about related activities also after their project end as many experiments are interested in the services provided by the DIHs especially related to funding. Finally, DIATOMIC prepared guidelines on how to set up a new DIH and there are discussions at the National and European Level to align the DIH sustainability with the EU funding scheme.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

DIATOMIC tapped into existing networks of consortium partners to reach SMEs active in the 3 areas. It also used the PUSH experiments as beacons to attract top talent to the PULL open calls. Building on previous experience, a plan for dissemination and communication of open calls was developed and implemented to maximize reach to interested parties, both SMEs and mid-caps. By encouraging a large pool of applicants, DIATOMIC selected high potential concepts and deliver high productivity gains.
In total 260 proposals were submitted (85 & 175) and of them, 17 were funded. We have 433 members of the DIATOMIC DIH of which CCs are 264 and SMEs/MidCaps are 169. The number of members per sector are Agrifood 137, Health 159 and Manufacturing 137 respectively.
16 SMEs and 4 CCs were funded from Open Call #1 and 13 SMEs, 12 CCs and 1 SME-CC were funded from Open Call #2. The average increase of the experiments’ technologies in the TRL scale, during the program was 3 levels whereas the average number of early adopters raised by the experiments during the program was 2.4 early adopters. However, the impact is larger as one experiment reported 3 early adopters but they refer to 3 large healthcare centres with 18 locations and on each location between 40 and 125 prople.

DIATOMIC enabled technology providers to enter sectors in which European regions have traditional strengths, yet are underserved by ICT, and assisted them in this process through an effective open innovation environment. This represents a new market for technology providers, in Europe and abroad, for which they gain a first-movers advantage. Private investment is boosted through demonstrated and disseminated efficiency of the system, attracting SMEs and mid-caps to invest in DIATOMIC application experiments for digital innovation. The project also sought to leverage public funding in ICT R&D, from structural funds, innovation funds and other EU, national and regional funding sources. From the companies that participated in the experiments, one informed that they invested 500K own funding in the company whereas another one has had a number of presentations to investor communities and obtained about 500K in funding during 2019, and was in the process of closing an additional funding round of about 1-1.5million in 2020. At the same time also other companies were discussing about investments but no further info was disclosed.

DIATOMIC DIHs and their members