ENRIITC made significant progress during its second reporting period. WP2 brought to light key insights on the current state of industry-research infrastructure (RI) relations, and the key takeaways can be summarised as:
-Knowledge exchange is an under-explored ground for both ILOS and ICOs, and is a possible convergence area for ILO and ICO activity. It is an ‘unknown’ territory where there should be potential;
-Terminology issue: difference between ILO and ICO hardly perceived by the reference community;
-The RI “ICO” does not exist (as one person);
-There is a large need for professionalisation of the sector, and creating a culture of industry relations with RIs;
-Performance indicators should be adapted to the individual characteristics (vision/mission/objectives) of each RI;
-CatRIs has been identified as one potential solution for a portal of RI-industry connection.
The mapping exercise conducted in 2020 revealed that European RIs vary greatly in size and maturity, and whether they are single-sited or distributed. The outcomes of WP2 supported the development of specific strategic recommendations within WP3, which produced a list of 17 key actions that every RI interested in industry collaboration should consider. WP3 and WP5 worked together to disseminate these recommendations through articles on the project website and social media.
The ENRIITC Hub, proposed in D3.1 is the central aspect of the network's sustainability. It will serve as a meeting point for industry liaison officers (ILOs) and industry contact officers (ICOs), offering training activities, organizing annual events on RI-industry engagement, and potentially representing RIs toward policy makers (e.g. ESFRI) via a board of experts. Other significant progress was made under WP4, which focused on demonstrating the quality, performance, and impact of engagement actions through training, case studies, and industry events.
An important milestone was the recognition of ENRIITC in the ESFRI Strategy Report on Research Infrastructures Roadmap 2021. This shows the impact of ENRIITC within the RI landscape.
As part of the networking activities tasks, ENRIITC increased its outreach activities to support project dissemination and positioning in the wider community. ENRIITC was invited as a keynote speaker to present RI-industry engagement in various fora, which gave high visibility to the network and strengthened its importance. Two major in-person networking events were also organized by the end of the project: BSBF 2022 and ICRI 2022, which served as advocacy platforms to encourage follow-up on activities and engage with different stakeholders, including the European Commission (EC).
The network experienced a constant growth of 465% between 2020 and 2022, and the project closed with 497 individuals at the end of December 2022. A significant development was the work done on the sustainability of the network, which was thoroughly implemented in close collaboration with consortium partners. A Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was proposed for RIs and ILOs to confirm their engagement with the ENRIITC network, and a marketing campaign was launched to inform the network about the MoU and invite RIs to contact ENRIITC. A booklet on case studies and an advocacy paper, as well as testimonial campaigns, were developed, which clearly demonstrate the positive impact of ENRIITC in enabling changes.
