Catalysing Digitisation throughout Europe

Project Information

Smart4Europe2

Grant agreement ID: 872111

DOI

10.3030/872111

Project closed

EC signature date 28 October 2019

Start date 1 January 2020

End date 31 December 2021

Funded under

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

Total cost

€ 999 687,50

EU contribution

€ 999 687,50

Coordinated by

STEINBEIS 2I GMBH
Germany

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - Smart4Europe2 (Catalysing Digitisation throughout Europe)

Reporting period: 2021-01-01 to 2021-12-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

Today, innovation is to an increasing extent based on digitisation leading to new functionalities, products and services, but the speed of change is so quick that SMEs and mid-caps are struggling to keep pace. In order to address this, Digital Innovation Hubs (DIH) have been set up to help companies with their digital transformation. This has been done at European, national and regional levels; however, the resulting community of DIHs is fragmented. The aim of the Smart4Europe2 was thus to bring together and link the DIHs as well as projects aligned to SAE (DEI CSAs, ECSEL, I4MS, etc.) and make DIH services more widely available to SMEs and mid-caps. Smart4Europe2s focus was on:
• Provide services supporting the SAE network including a single Innovation Portal, Market Place, Service Centre, broad dissemination activities and coaching & training of SMEs and DIHs
• Strengthen the SAE community cohesion and facilitate collaboration and knowledge transfer
• Attract new stakeholders (SMEs and mid-caps) and achieve broad coverage by targeted outreach activities via own networks and multipliers (ENN, NCPs, and clusters)
• Grow the SAE ecosystem by connecting with new stakeholders and multiplying the impacts by collaborating with related projects, initiatives and networks and enable brokering
• Sustain the SAE network by creating a strategic roadmap based on a SAE Technology Radar, DIH business and collaboration models, strategic linkage of national and regional initiatives and via leveraging investment
The work expanded upon the successful Smart4Europe1 CSA, driven by a strong consortium of partners that have already demonstrated their commitment in shaping the SAE Initiative. Under the SAE umbrella there is a growing number of projects, which Smart4Europe2 brought together to collaborate and link to other initiatives, helping it to grow organically to catalyse digitisation throughout Europe.

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

An overview of the achievements of the objectives is given below.
The Innovation Portal, Market Place and Service Centre provides the enabling services to support the SAE Network to act as a one-stop shop for SAE internal and external stakeholders supporting digital innovation across Europe:
- Maintaining the Innovation Portal
- Restructuring of the Innovation Portal for better usability, especially for SMEs
- Face-lift of the Innovation Portal, new look and feel
- Updating the content of the Innovation Portal
- Establishing the SAE Market Place
- Maintaining the Service Center
Collaboration within the SAE Network, consolidation of the SAE Network by enhancing collaboration between the IAs, to act and feel as ‚one Initiative‘:
- Reinforcing the SAE cohesion by fostering close cooperation between all actions supported under the SAE Initiative
- Creating a common voice & vision to boost cross-cutting impacts
- Planning and implement joint activities
- Sharing experience and best practice and provide guidelines and lessons learnt for current and future IA/DIHs
Strategic Outreach and Ecosystem Growth by attracting newcomers to the SAE Initiative nd expanding SAE coverage and multiplies impacts through collaboration:
- Growing the network of stakeholders contributing to / benefitting from, the SAE community
- Achieving a wider coverage
- Linking up with related initiatives like I4MS, DIHNET.EU ECSEL and key DEI projects
Strategy for SAE Sustainability: sustains the DIH Network and enables the next generation of SAE in Horizon Europe:
- Updating the SAE Technology and Innovation Radar
- Building strategic links to national and regional initiatives
- Linking SMEs to investors
- Elaborating strategies for IA/SAE sustainability towards the EDIH network
Communication, Dissemination and Exploitation and Training: communicates and disseminates the SAE Initiative broadly and comprehensively to ensure early uptake of results:
- Ensuring an appropriate communication, dissemination and exploitation of results
- Providing a ‘news service’ feeding into the Innovation Portal
- Targeted communications and social media activities
- Presentation at events and workshops
- Training and mentoring for SMEs, DIHs and academia

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)

Smart4Europe2 addressed the 3rd phase of SAE by providing services to SMEs and mid-caps helping them with the application of digital technologies and training support to provide the right skills so they can assess, plan and master their digital transformation. Smart4Europe2 further reinforced the collaboration between the actions supported under the SAE Initiative, increased the outreach and boost the impacts of these actions and achieved a wider coverage of stakeholders in technological, application, innovation, and geographic terms. Smart4Europe2 also helped companies gain competitive advantage through early technology adoption and help non-tech sectors learn about possibilities to increase market shares and productivity through application of digital technologies. Additionally, the project supported technology suppliers to seek finance for early product development and to generate access to early customers. An aim was to leverage existing investments via national, regional and co-financing with industry, Business Angels and Venture Capital funding. In particular, Smart4Europe2 acted to:

- Provide access to competences that will help assessing, planning and mastering the digital transformation
- Provide access to innovation networks and broad spectrum of competences and best practice examples
- Provide information on financial support to SMEs and mid-caps on both the demand and the supply side to master digital transformation including those operating in non-tech sectors

In concrete terms Smart4Europe2 scaleed up connection with new advanced SME and mid-cap ICT users, linked with I4MS, ECSEL and key DEI CSAs, coordinated national/regional/private and European investments and developed a strategy for a sustainable network of (E)DIHs, providerd services and training, assessed the status of SAE technologies within Europe and provided recommendations for Horizon Europe. The key aims was to support business growth and increase competitiveness of digital technology suppliers, in particular SMEs and mid-caps, but also support the establishment of a self-sustainable ecosystem of (European) Digital Innovation Hubs. Thus, Smart4Europe2 acted as a catalyst for the digitisation strategy of the European Commission.

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