www.imveurope.com
@imveurope
researcher career development, prizes and even coordination and support activities. Virtually any type of organisation with an innovation dimension can slot in and the funding levels are up to 125 per cent of the direct costs (100 per cent of direct costs plus 25 per cent overheads). SME Instrument: Tis is a brand new
programme aimed at giving free business development money to small and medium enterprises in small starter chunks of €50,000 (to about 750 SMEs annually) for getting themselves investor-ready, and larger investment chunks of up to €2.5 million (to about 250 SMEs annually) for actually doing the business development. Te money doesn’t have to be returned and the organisation doesn’t have to give up a share in its business; the participant has to put up 30 per cent of the investment in the form of time and material. It really is a dream come true for high potential time-poor and capital-poor entrepreneurs with strongly innovative technology businesses. And from 2015 onwards there will be no prescribed technology or application domains. Te downside is that there is not enough of it. One thousand awards per year may seem like a lot, but that turns out to be – i f distributed in proportion to national GDP – about 10 for somewhere like Ireland or 160 for all of Germany. Success rates are in the single digits, but forewarned is forearmed – so, with good upfront assessment and the right support, success chances go up and it is certainly worth the effort. COSME runs parallel to H2020 and is a separate
schemes. Tey have a handy look-up service on their website to help identify who to contact. RSFF is the Commission’s Risk Sharing
Finance Facility for research and innovation. Te Commission has put about a billion euros into it and the European Investment Bank has put in the same. It is run by the EIB and middle to large size organisations, with €15 million projects, can apply directly for corporate debt financing, project financing and mezzanine financing. Simply call them up to discuss it. Small enterprises and mid-caps should look to InnovFin (below). Tere is also intermediated RSFF financing by way of risk sharing lines of credit and guarantees, and is administered by local institutions. RSI was the Risk Sharing
So what about those acronyms? There really are hundreds of them
Instrument for innovative, research-oriented SMEs and small mid-caps. It has recently been morphed into what is now called InnovFin. InnovFin is a monster €24
billion fund for provision of loan guarantees and equity and, in the June 2014 launch event,
it was explained that it will consist of a range of tailored products – from guarantees for financial intermediaries to direct loans to enterprises, as well as advisory services – to support the smallest to the largest R&I projects in the EU and countries associated with Horizon 2020. Tere is a health warning on the EIF website
set of programmes. It does a few things to support entrepreneurialism indirectly, but with regards to improving direct access to finance, it has €1.4 billion to spend over the period to 2020 on loan guarantees for loans of up to €150,000 and for an equity facility. In either case, the organisation needs to contact designated local intermediaries (financial and investment institutions) to find out how. LIFE is the EU programme for climate and
the environment. Most of it is about forests and rivers and so forth, so not particularly relevant to machine vision technology. But part of it is aimed at project financing for implementation of industrial processes and technologies, which greatly reduces the ecological impact of production. Machine vision undoubtedly plays a role here. EIF is the European Investment Fund and its
job is to run some of Europe’s many financing programmes for the benefit of SMEs (including the COSME facilities). Get in touch with local financial intermediaries to find out what is available and you will oſten find that EIF support is blended into local
concerning access to the funds: ‘Please note that the selection of financial intermediaries under InnovFin SME Guarantee Facility is ongoing’. Te whole machine is still only being set up. Tis no doubt will give first mover advantage for any companies wanting to beta-test it. O
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
James Cogan is senior grants and innovation consultant with PNO Consultants. He can be reached at:
james.cogan@
pnoconsultants.com, +39 393 838 4174 and
be.linkedin. com/in/jkcogan/
PNO Group (
www.pnoconsultants.com) employs around 280 professionals in six countries, fully dedicated to grant procurement and innovation consultancy, and covering all stages of the grant and innovation cycle. The company provides related services to universities, European research institutes, governmental organisations and European research consortia as well as to SMEs and multinational enterprises.
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