Digital Innovation Hubs (DIH) federation for large scale adoption of digital technologies by European SMEs

Project Information

DigiFed

Grant agreement ID: 872088

DOI

10.3030/872088

Project closed

EC signature date 5 December 2019

Start date 1 January 2020

End date 31 March 2023

Funded under

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

Total cost

€ 8 432 253,42

EU contribution

€ 7 995 488,25

Coordinated by

COMMISSARIAT A L ENERGIE ATOMIQUE ET AUX ENERGIES ALTERNATIVES
France

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - DigiFed (Digital Innovation Hubs (DIH) federation for large scale adoption of digital technologies by European SMEs)

Reporting period: 2021-07-01 to 2023-03-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

DigiFed, part of the Smart Anything Everywhere initiative, is dedicated to supporting EU industries to digitalise their product & services and reaching new markets enabled by Cyber Physical Systems (CPS) & Embedded Systems. DigiFed gathers twelve partners with expertise in digital technologies and/or innovation management from nine EU countries.
The challenge DigiFed aims to tackle is to accelerate the design, development and uptake of advanced digital technologies by European industry - especially SMEs and mid-caps - in products that include innovative electronic components, software and systems, and especially in sectors where digital technologies are underexploited.

DigiFed supported projects are designed to strengthen the European digital ecosystem through the adoption of advanced digital technologies (CPS & embedded systems) and a combination of regional, national and European funding instruments so that SMEs and midcaps can benefit from knowledge sharing regardless of their location.
Three innovation pathways are proposed to EU companies.
· Applications Experiment (AE) SINGLE AE for project involving one SME and a Digifed partner and an innovative model of “TWIN AE” involving two cross-border SMEs/midcapsTwo explorative services for DIH will be trialed involving the following co-funding schemes:
· Generic Experiments (GE) are designed to test new collaborations between research centres and a group of SMEs and midcaps as well as evaluate new co-financing mechanisms between European and regional funding to foster European industry digitalization. DigiFed targets to launch 3 GE Communities.
· Digital Challenge (DC) will experiment with new co-funding mechanisms with large European organisations -the Digital Challenge Owners (DCOs). Advanced digital technology SMEs will be selected through an open call to solve the challenge proposed by the DCOs. The purpose of the Digital Challenge is to highlight attractive market needs to be addressed through CPS and embedded systems and for which new solutions are required. DigiFed aims to launch 3 Digital Challenges.

Altogether, DigiFed aims to involve at least 200 EU SMEs and midcaps with different Digital maturity levels and from all markets including sectors with low digital penetration. A minimum of 80 EU companies will receive Cascade Funding support through one of DigiFed’s innovation pathways.
Finally, DigiFed aims to foster interaction between European Digital Innovation Hubs (DIHs). The DigiFed consortium already involves six well-established DIHs from different countries and will expand its network through collaboration with other DIHs aiming at fostering cross-border sustainable collaboration and improving the services given by the European DIH network.

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

Despite the pandemic, the project has been running smoothly according to the planned activities. Most of the expected KPI’s have been reached or exceeded In more details:
Digifed implemented and experienced successfully the 3 innovation pathways testing pure EC funding (Application experiment), combination of regional and EC funding (Generic Experiment Community) and private-EC co-funding (Digital Challenge).
• The Application Experiment (AE) has been the main instrument for DigiFed implementation, with the main outcomes :
- 3,6 M€ of Cascade Funding (CF) invested (90%)
- 44 Application Experiments (AE): 17 SINGLE AE and 27 TWIN AE. An innovative model with “Low digital TWIN AE” involving 2 cross-border SMEs/midcaps, one of which with low digital maturity level was proposed after OC1 ( 3 project selected)
- 72 companies that have implemented R&I project to disrupt, upgrade or manufacture an innovative digital product or service,

Two innovative pathways have been defined, tested and evaluated during Digifed
• The Digital Challenge (DC) focuses on trailing new co-funding mechanisms with companies directly involving the enterprise demand side. 3 Digital Challenges (DC) involving 7 companies have been financed with 155k€ of CF ( 4% of the full CF) and 155k€ of private co-funding raised.
• The Generic Experiment (GE) communities are involving a group of SMEs and mid-caps to implement advanced technology demonstrators developed by one of DigiFed RTO (GE Owner) testing as well co-financing mechanisms between European and regional funding.
4 Generic Experiments (GE) have been implemented involving 51 SME (GE members) with a total of 230k€ of CF ( 6%) and 270k€ of regional co-funding raised.

Overall, DigiFed provided CF of almost 4M€ to European companies as well as technical and innovation management support corresponding to 1,1 M€ of resources provided by the consortium.

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)

Main outcomes and lessons learnt from Digifed for digitalisation of SMEs in the framework of EDIHs.
1. Confirmation that CF and AE are efficient tools to support SMEs innovation
• Large number of application at all calls and positive feedbacks on the format (agile & low admin. burden)
• High quality projects with concrete impacts in terms of creation of new products/services, fostered cross-border collaboration, definition of new business cases and access to funding opportunities
• ST has a strong attractivity at all OC : CF gives a unique opportunity for SMEs to collaborate with large IT groups
• Most of the applicants and selected SMEs for the AE are very small SME ( 80% are < 10) most were already proposing digital product and service , 14 % selected SMEs declared to be low digital maturity.
• 86 % of the companies supported declare to reach TRL > 7 at the end of their project and 43 product are foreseen to access their market within a year.
2. Large success of TWIN, Low Dig TWIN and DC: partnership of cross border companies
• The TWIN AE attracted 80% of the Low digital SMEs helping this companies to work with a technology supplier.
• the Mid caps companies applied only to the TWIN AE, this TWIN AE model enable smaller SMEs to work with mid-caps / large companies : fill a gap (in the support of SMEs)
• The three DC have all overcome their technical objectives and are launching the industrialisation DC. DC is a strong tool to speed up the access to new markets for SMEs (by having a first customer, DCO)
3. GE community of SMEs with a RTO
• Very efficient to create mutual knowledge and understanding between RTO and cross border SMEs
• Can be designed to reach low digital mature companies / low digitalized sectors
• Strong interest from SMEs that could accept to pay for such service if proposed by an EDIH.
4. EDIH network and sustainability
• EDIH interested by the new innovation pathways : TWIN , DC and GE
• A EDIH booklet was prepared https://digifed.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/DigiFed_DIH-Ecosystem-booklet-2.pdf and first collaboration initiated
• Need to identify subvention to launch EDIH cross border services : Cascade Funding , co-financing EU + regional funding (more complex)
5. Tool box available
• Different methodologies and process flow have been optimized for the Cascade Funding, project monitoring, impact assessment of the different innovation Pathways. These are made available through Public report.
- The value proposition of the 3 different Innovation pathways as been presented and discussed during DigiFed final event to EDIHs and is available in the report “DigiFed Innovation Pathways Information

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