Methodologies for Researcher Led INnovations

Project Information

MERLIN

Grant agreement ID: 780460

DOI

10.3030/780460

Project closed

EC signature date 24 November 2017

Start date 1 December 2017

End date 29 February 2020

Funded under

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

Total cost

€ 996 137,50

EU contribution

€ 996 137,50

Coordinated by

UNIVERSIDAD POLITECNICA DE CARTAGENA
Spain

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - MERLIN (Methodologies for Researcher Led INnovations)

Reporting period: 2018-12-01 to 2020-02-29

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

Funding in ICT projects under FP7 and H2020 will total over 11,268 million € by the end of the current work programme. Stimulated and supported by these programmes, fundamental and applied research has been an important foundation activity enabling society to broach new frontiers in technologies and capacities, improving human and economic productivity. However, many breakthrough discoveries often fail to reach the market/end-users, resulting in incomplete exploitation of potential innovations by the researchers who develop them. It is not only the direct results of the funded projects, but also the indirect and compound outputs formed from and created during the directed project that form the potential innovations and wider impact of Europe’s research activities.

Within Europe, SMEs have long been recognised as the Union’s growth engines accounting for 57% of value added and two-thirds of employment. Start-ups (or young SMEs) are particularly good job creators with an average of 12 jobs created by European start-ups and young SMEs acting as the greatest net job creators within the private sector. Thus, there can be no doubt that the fostering and growth of SMEs has the greatest impact socially and economically on the well-being of the single market.

MERLIN project will support market-oriented researchers, SMEs and start-ups across Europe to consider the full potential of their research and to shape ideas and outputs into innovations to be ready for market validation and commercialisation. In the context of Startup Europe initiative, the concrete objectives of MERLIN are to (i) stimulate a greater interest from researchers to view the results of their work as potential opportunities to be exploited with the correct business model; (ii) accelerate and foster the grow of new ventures by equipping researchers better to work with effective models for the successful commercialization/bringing to market of their R+D activities; and (iii) introduce the European entrepreneurship ecosystem and the financial opportunities it offers to create and help new ventures. This will increase productivity, improve private investment in further researchers, create more global innovations, and stimulate a greater interest from researchers to consider the results of their work as potential opportunities for commercialisation.

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

"During the 27 months of duration of MERLIN , partners of the consortium delivered a total of 75 project activities: 37 training workshops; 3 courses at universities and research centres in Spain, comprising 4 workshops each plus clinic hours to support participants in the development of their business models; workshops in 4 scientific conferences; 17 meet-ups between project participants and stakeholders of the entrepreneurial ecosystem; and 5 webinars on legal aspects, sources of financing, and Intellectual Property Rights. In total, more than 2,000 people have attended the activities organized in the context of the MERLIN project in 21 cities of 11 European countries, and 473 researchers have participated regularly in training workshops and meet-ups. MERLIN has also invited and covered the expenses of 21 promising participants to attend international entrepreneurship fairs, like South Summit. The profile of the attendees was 42% researchers, 39% SMEs (technical staff), 4% PhD students, and 18% other, with a 48% female presence.

Besides these core activities, we have developed the content for 8 thematic workshops; created 32 digital contents, including videos and podcasts interviewing project participants and business experts; and actively participated in 27 events / fairs, with a booth for project participants, a presentation of MERLIN and its activities, as guest speakers or with a panel. All the content (slides, videos, podcasts, etc.) are stored and publicly available at MERLIN storage on Zenodo. MERLIN also developed the 'Growth Radar' online application, to help researcher find programmes in Europe that can support their current needs in terms of partners, finance or other needs, based on 6 criteria: Idea Stage, Technology Maturity, Market Maturity, Financials, Amount of funds received, and Team size.

Participants who attended MERLIN activities reported that they had created a total of 23 SMEs, filed 15 patents, 19 participants secured funding (private or public), 28 participants had setup licence agreements and partnership with other SMEs/corporates. 53 of them have entered other entrepreneurship programmes to continue improving their business skills.

Exploitation and sustainability of the project results is guaranteed thanks to partners' current and future activities and projects. Content, lessons learnt and network of contact will be used by all MERLIN partners.

Regarding dissemination activities, we want to highlight the following ones:
- Active presence of MERLIN at large entrepreneurship and innovation fairs: South Summit, Startup Olé, Foro Transfiere, Wolves Summit, Women in Tech Summit, InnoShare.
- Conferences: Digital Day, ICT Vienna, International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), Infoshare, ICT Proposers' Day.
- ""Innovation Radar breakfast"" at the Euro Parliament, on January 2020. The working breakfast was hosted by the Vice-Chair of the Industry, Research and Energy (ITRE) Committee of the EP, the MEP Lina Galvez Muñoz.
- Interview in regional TV of Poznan (Poland) and Polish Nation Radio in morning show.
- 4 Articles published in “Emprendedores”, a Spanish magazine about entrepreneurship."

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)

Being a Coordination and Support Action, the progress beyond the state of the art is very limited, and focused on the exploitation of research results. Besides the results achieved by project participants, as described above, we want to highlight the results of the ‘Customer discovery’ process, and the study of the synergies with EFSI and ESFI initiatives.

The main outcomes and lessons learnt from the performance of the ‘Customer discovery’ process and the organization of the activities, which may help to define better strategies for future programmes, are:
- Researchers genuinely want to increase the impact of their research but not at the cost of their focus. Researchers will rarely become entrepreneurs.
- Training in specific methodologies will not result in researchers creating companies but will support their creation of concepts for commercialists to pick up on
- People working at Tech Transfer Offices struggle to identify the potential in their own organisations and are treated as other by researchers

Regarding the synergies with the EFSI and ESIF instruments, incubation and acceleration programmes along with early-stage grants provide the best investments to support researchers, start-ups and SMEs in the commercialisation of research results. MERLIN participants were, in general, at a very early stage to benefit from VC or larger scale public grants or loans.

On the long term, Society will benefit from the change of mindset in the Research community, since the new Digital Economy needs to integrate innovative research results as quickly as possible, in order to create companies that contribute to augmenting job creation and GDP in Europe.

Photo at MERLIN booth in South Summit 2019: partners, participants and PO

MERLIN logo

Photograph consortium - Madrid dec 2017