MINE.THE.GAP started officially on 01/09/2020, and from the starting date until M39, the following actions summarize the work performed and the main results achieved:
-An Advisory Board was constituted and involved, comprising diverse innovation and external actors who provide insights into the interests and views of their stakeholder communities that were and will be strategically involved in key stages of the project. The Advisory Board members were also considered to be involved in the Transparency Committee decisions to have clear and objective criteria when granting third parties.
- Drafting and implementation of a Management and Quality Plan to provide a reference and guideline on the management and quality processes that will govern the course of the MINE.THE.GAP project, and POPD requirements containing the technical, organizational and legal measures required to guarantee the security of personal data.
- Design of MINE.THE.GAP website including information about the project but also a matchmaking platform that allowed applicants of the open calls to upload their profile and find synergies to become project partners for opting MINE.THE.GAP funding.
- Design, launching and funding companies’ trough 2 open calls and Business Hub Services were offered to the Fist Open and Second call beneficiaries. 26 projects were funded, involving 63 SMEs. Among them, 40 SMEs benefitted from additional support for innovation.
- A series of webinars were designed and offered to MINE.THE.GAP community, and impact monitoring of MINE.THE.GAP project was performed inside and outside the consortium.
- Selection of open call beneficiaries was conducted after their design, and the following monitoring of projects implemented under open calls was executed.
- Design of the Support Services was conducted and executed as well, trying to involve all the funded SMEs in the open calls.
- Communication and dissemination were key tools for the exploitation of MINE.THE.GAP project. During the project, 13 flyers, rollups and posters and 10 videos were created to promote and explain the action and its developments, including 34 press releases launched. As a result, not only social networks and project website were employed to attract and involve the European actors in the raw materials, mining and ICTs value chains, but also 29 conferences (Trade mission, ECCP clusters talks, Pollutec, infodays, etc), 9 workshops (S3P and OECD collaborations, clustering, inter-platforms, etc) were organized by the project partners to amplify its collaboration while in 6 additional events MINE.THE.GAP collaborated jointly with other projects (GREENPEG, I4-GREEN, SMARTY, DigiClusterHub, etc). MINE.THE.GAP was present in 12 international exhibitions (Mines and Minerals Hall, Pollutec, International Congress of Energy and Mineral Resources, etc) and, since training was also considered a pillar for approaching industry and SMEs, 23 actions were designed on this regard (MOOCs, webinars, etc). 71 communication campaigns were launched with the advancements of the project. Indirectly, MINE.THE.GAP was involved in 11 conferences of the field (Raw Materials Week, Cluster meet Regions, EIT Raw Materials Expers Forum and Stakeholders day, EU industrial days, etc), 3 workshops (e.g. S3 community of practice), 5 events, 7 brokerage events (EU industry week, Foro transfiere, etc), 3 pitch events, among others.
- Analysis of the impact of the project at consortium level, for SMEs beneficiaries of the open calls as well as from Business Services.
