EU funded research and innovation (R&I) projects in the transport sector have played an important role in advancing innovations, accelerating digitalisation, providing more inclusive services, reducing emissions and pollution, improving efficiency, and strengthening competitiveness. Such R&I projects have also created opportunities for cooperation among various stakeholders, enabled new business models and even created new enterprises. Dissemination and exploitation have always been an important part of R&I projects. Although all project proposals have already included dissemination and exploitation plans, it has been noted that not all project results have been exploited and, eventually, expected societal impacts may not be delivered.
To address this issue, the Task Force on Accelerating Innovation Uptake for Sustainable Transport call on all project beneficiaries, associations with interests in the Horizon Europe Programme, and EC to take actions in support uptakes of R&I project outcomes to realise full potential of innovation in the transport sector. Different actions should be taken before, during and after project phase.
>> Click here to access the full Call for Actions
During the launch event on 15th March 2023 (recording) the Call for Actions was presented and discussed in a panel with Pedro Homem de Gouveia (Senior Policy and Project Manager, POLIS), David Storer (Director, Research, Innovation & New Mobility, CLEPA), Stefan DEIX (Director, EUCAR), and Nik Delmeire (ALICE Vice Chair/Coordinator, European Inland Waterway Transport Platform).
The conclusion: The call to action is supported and can even be extended. For example, strategic planning of exploitation should start very early in the project phase and professional communication bureaus should also be involved in the establishment of consortia. But it is not only about the projects themselves, the EU should also do more promotion of the project results and emphasise even more how much the EU has supported them. Publicity for the EU should be increased, but also at local level, e.g. open innovation days could be organised where companies open their doors to the public. To make it easier for the public and other interested stakeholders to access the project results, the tools provided by the EU for this purpose should be advertised more widely and the public project deliverables should be shortened to one to three pages. Impact will be greater if only shorter documents, not 30 pages long, are published. After all these suggestions for improvement, it is also important to mention that the overall consensus is that the EU and project promoters are already making great efforts to exploit their results. So we can look positively to the future.
In addition to the roundtable discussion, Ludger Rogge, DG Research & Innovation, EC also presented "Different EC funding opportunities to accelerate market update". In addition, the individual projects behind the task force were introduced: Yanying Li (BOOSTLOG), Jeanett Bolther (ENTRANCE), Anne Häner (RECIPROCITY), Freek de Bruijn (REMOBILISE), Jan Christiaens (FastTrack), Oliver Lah (Future Horizon), Bartosz Dziugiel (ASSURED), Mihai Barcanescu (Lasting & Platina3).
Background
The Task Force on Accelerating Innovation Uptake for Sustainable Transport consists of 9 CSA projects funded by Horizon 2020, including : BOOSTLOG, ENTRANCE, RECIPROCITY, REMOBILISE, FastTrack, Future Horizon, ASSURED, Lasting, and Platina3. Cluster Mobility & Logistics is directly involved in RECIPROCITY and REMOBILISE.