www.imveurope.com
@imveurope
being done for research’s sake, oſten with no clear end in mind, and not being done very well; i.e. not always money well spent. Te EU, from 2014 onwards, wants to see
credible business plans – or, to leave it more open, exploitation plans – in the proposals it receives. Entrepreneurs should be writing more of the grant applications, and not leaving it all to the university professors. Tese are very good things for sure, but this still does not mean the process of getting your hands on the money is easy. Te complexity arises from the fact that there are around 20 sub- programmes under H2020, COSME and LIFE, plus dozens of different types of projects – or actions as they are sometimes called – and hundreds of topics and call deadlines in any given year. Tis all yields thousands of potential funding opportunities. Add to this that project proposals now need a serious business plan and that, in order to shorten the timeframes from proposal submission to receipt of cash, they need to be right first time (previously there was a due diligence and revision period in the process, called negotiation, but this has largely been removed). So, while there is a genuine and large scale effort to make things simpler and more logical – listen to any speech by the Commission vice president Neelie Kroes if you need to be persuaded of this – there is inevitably going to be considerable effort required to figure out how best to go about acquiring the funds. It is worth that effort though. Te money is as
We are now in the second half of year one of
Europe’s 2014 to 2020 new funding cycle and the vision and approach underpinning it have evolved significantly compared to the last period. Procedures are simpler, funding levels are higher and the funding criteria are more market and industry driven. Te information available to end users is getting much better too, with the European Commission launching new and revamped websites and information services. Europe is shiſting some of the emphasis from primary research to the business end of innovation. Anyone watching the process will have noticed the word ‘innovation’ creeping in everywhere. It’s as if the Commission did a massive find-and-replace, substituting ‘research’ with ‘research-and-innovation’. Innovation is shorthand for doing useful things with the completed research and doing useful research effectively. Te elephant in the room with public funded research – and this is not unheard of in private research either – is that research is mostly
Anyone watching
the process will have noticed the word ‘innovation’ creeping in everywhere
free as any money can be in that it does not have to be paid back; no rights are given away, a reasonable amount of the money is given up front and the process by which the Commission evaluates how it is used is largely honour based. Also, in contrast to some nationally and regionally administered funds, which have been known to change rules as they go along or break their own rules (i.e. the bid is won, but then they discover they’ve no money aſter all), the Commission is reliable, open, honest and consistent. In the case of the SME Instrument and LIFE programmes there doesn’t even have to be other partners on the project, and the organisation defines exactly what it is it wants to do with the funds so long as the
overall criteria is met. Project consortia are required to maintain and submit comprehensive reports on their use of resources and their activities, but the quality of the work done is largely leſt up to the professionalism of the participants. Tis last feature can be a double-edged sword; it makes life easier for high-quality professional organisations, but potentially it also leaves the system open to abuse by less value-adding applicants.
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