At the start of the project, DigiCirc delivered a comprehensive overview of the digitalisation for circular innovation and the approach to promote it. This served as a foundation for a strategic plan to engage various actors (mostly clusters, SMEs, and investors) into a Pan-European network that have the common aim of boosting the development of circular value-chains across European industrial sectors. Over 50 actors actively participated in key project activities, such as defining challenges for the open calls, promoting them, requirements for the digital tools and data collection.
Between November 2020 and October 2021, significant efforts were dedicated to the management of the three open calls, one per domain, which include the preparation of documentation, promotion, evaluation and selection of beneficiaries. Out of a total of 139 applications received, a total of 48 solutions, led by 2 or more SMEs, were selected and integrated one of the three acceleration programmes, conducted between April 2021 and February 2023.
Each programme was composed of 3 phases. Phases 1 and 2 consisted of an intensive 12-week training with access to 17 online courses, 7 workshops, coaching (1 per week) and mentoring (1 every 2 weeks) sessions. These activities aimed to support the beneficiaries in structuring and enforcing their value proposition and their business models, in order to develop a concrete and solid go-to-market strategy, as well as to launch a pilot on the market, increasing the Technology Readiness Level (TRL) of their solution.
Following a pitch competition, 17 consortia were selected to enter the third phase of 6 months. Each of them was granted 100k€ each to improve their prototype, market campaign and marketing strategy. In addition, they received support in matchmaking with potential investors (420 were reached out to explore investment opportunities) and in seeking further funding from both private & public sources.
In parallel, 4 digital tools have been created and continuously improved to assist SMEs in the design, demonstration, and commercialization of their solutions: a Matchmaking platform; a Circular Economy Data Hub; an Industrial Symbiosis platform; an InfoPortal. Each of these tools have proven to be a valuable resource, providing support and guidance to a diverse group of users.
Regarding the dissemination and communication aspects, a great focus was paid to social media channels which translated into a satisfactory number of followers both for the LinkedIn (#digicirc) (942 followers) and the Twitter (@circ_digi) (470 followers) accounts. The dissemination activities were directed to promote the open calls, DigiCirc events, the team, the digital tools, the InfoPortal posts and the MOOCs. Further effort was also carried on to promote the funded consortia ensuring that their ideas and innovations reached a wide audience of stakeholders.
Over the project’s last months, exploitable results of the project and their respective sustainability strategies to ensure DigiCirc impact beyond its project duration were investigated and summary of results published as part of the D6.5.
