Submitted: COST Proposal OC-2019-1-23678 “Open European Network for ENTerprise InnOVation in High Value Manufacturing” to COST (European Cooperation in Science and Technology)

Last night we submitted our first proposal: Proposal Reference OC-2019-1-23678 “Open European Network for ENTerprise InnOVation in High Value Manufacturing” to COST (European Cooperation in Science and Technology). Congratulations everyone !!!!!

The official “collection” of the proposal will be at 12 noon on September 5th and the funding decisions is indicated as being March 25 12 noon 2020. If the proposal is funded, further individuals may join the action, however they will not have voting rights in the management committee.

Regardless of whether our proposal is funded, we will start working against the proposed plan – although this may be rather slow since funding for networking costs (and time spent) is obviously not available. We will though be actively searching for industry sponsorship of the various work-packages as well. In the end however please consider participation as “marketing costs” for gaining new revenue – in that respect this and the following proposals may just be a sensible part of our daily work.

Based upon our successful COST collaboration we are now looking to tackle the following grant / funding opportunities and there will be separate invitations to participate issued. Here our aspiration (sort of in order of priority):

1. An ERASMUS+ Knowledge Alliance proposal focused on exploring the speed of innovation diffusion in high value manufacturing. The overview of this project will be completed and circulated by the end of September 2019 and the intent is to have the proposal ready for submission by the end of 2019. The current expectation is that the call will formally open in September/October and that the collection will be end of February 2020. Participants will need to (a) come from institutions of higher education, (b) bring along a partner from the high value manufacturing industry of any size and (c) also bring along an alliance with a publicly funded research project in the high value manufacturing space as a “sister” project. We will support your efforts in this of course. Participants will furthermore need to contribute actively to proposal creation, especially in respect to the needs analysis. Please note that there will be a formal partnership agreement and formal letters of intent required from all parties prior to the proposal submission. ERASMUS+ Knowledge Alliance funding covers networking costs AND time spent for a variety of roles (including researcher positions and/or Master projects) that will need to be detailed in the proposal. As before, the bulk of the proposal creation effort will be carried here yet we would appreciate participants to contribute 10-20 hours of work (research/writing/calls) each to the proposal.

2. An ERASMUS+ Mundus Joint Master Degree focus on the speed of innovation diffusion in high value manufacturing. The initial step here will be a Masters level certificate course based on the structure / content of the training section of our COST proposal and the developing “play-in-a-day”. The offer will be designed for online, face-to-face and hybrid delivery. Participants will need to come from institutions of higher education and be in a position to align / integrate with Master level programmes in the innovation and / or manufacturing space at their institutions. Please note that there will be a formal partnership agreement and formal letters of intent required from all parties prior to the proposal submission. We are aiming to have the certificate course ready for delivery in Q1 2020 with (joint-) accreditation at each participating university by the end of 2020. As before the bulk of the proposal creation effort will be carried here yet we would appreciate participants to contribute 10-20 hours of work (research/writing/calls) each to the proposal.

3. A national cultural grant opportunity for developing and performing the “play in a day” of the innovation experience. The initial step will be the co-creation of a high-level stage-script as part of the proposal. Participants can come from any type of organization (or be their individual self) and will need to contribute actively to collaborating on the stage-script. As before the bulk of the proposal creation effort will be carried here and we would appreciate participants to contribute 10-20 hours of work (research/writing/calls) each to the proposal. In addition it would be great if participants indicate support for the delivery of one event at their institution in 2020 (maybe aligned to the COST 2019 proposal events).

4. A research project on the speed of innovation in illicit trade. This is the “opposite” of responsible innovation and we are working on identifying a suitable call / funding source for this effort. More details as soon as we have identified a suitable call in the EU and we are hoping to find something similar to the US National Science Foundation set of calls in this context.

5. Next COST proposal round. There is of course also an opportunity to submit for the next COST proposal round that will be collected in April 2020 collection. The focus here is open to discussion yet we should ideally build off of the existing COST proposal / planned ERASMUS+ Knowledge Alliance proposal, so that it is independent and then provides the basis for another set of proposals.

For all of the above we will continue growing our network and please do invite colleagues to connect with me on LinkedIn and I will add them to our group. Feel free to share relevant posts there as well as you see fit. We also need to actively identify potential sister projects and continue alignment with the work you are doing full-time professionally.

Your attention to date has been truly appreciated and I believe we now have assembled a “tribe” of colleagues with whom “magic” is possible – let us help one another drive our agenda forward and we look forward to continuing our work together.

Please note that if you do not meet the formal requirements of a proposal (i.e. you are not aligned with a university or high value manufacturing company) you can still assume a role in the funded work, you just cannot be a formal proposer (which is quite nice since you avoid the legal responsibilities of needing to deliver on the funding contract).

Key next steps:

1. Middle of September the refreshed version of our Powerpoint pack will be issued in order to help solicit further participation in the proposal efforts via the LinkedIn group, Facebook etc.

2. End of September the overview of the ERASMUS+ Knowledge Alliance proposal will be ready and circulated with a call for participation. If you would like to participate in creating this overview please reach out to me via email.

3. End of October the structure of the ERASMUS+ Mundus Joint Master Degree programme will be ready and circulated with a call for participation. If you would like to participate in creating this overview please reach out to me via email.

4. Starting second week of September regular monthly calls to share stories, conduct small training sessions and align efforts around the above opportunities. I will post suggestions for length / day next week.

Request for support: We hope you have appreciated the effort of launching this effort and creating our first proposal. There are also a number of fantastic opportunities emerging. In this respect it would be “really really” great if you could help support all these efforts by pointing out conferences we can present our work on and perhaps including each-other in your own proposals and funded projects or paid teaching / academic / consulting support work. There are also a plethora of opportunities for exciting Master projects and we are happy to support any proposal writing efforts. We have always promised to focus on creating commercial opportunities and will continue to do so – how “fast” this works out will depend on the amount of time we can dedicate to it and that will depend on the commercial support we can organize via funders, donors, sponsors etc. for travel, pizza and lodging!

Cheers and ever onward

Oliver

Image from: https://ip.com/blog/invention-story-fireworks/

If you are interested in learning more please visit us at www.innovation-web.eu, our LinkedIn Group at https://www.linkedin.com/groups/8779542/, our blog at https://www.innovation-web.eu/entov-hvm-blog, our Researchgate project page at https://www.researchgate.net/project/Open-European-Network-for-Enterprise-Innovation-in-High-Value-Manufacturing-ENTOV-HVM and our Facebook page at: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2014779865300180/. You can also follow us via Twitter: @owschwabe (#innovationweb) and the LinkedIn Group page https://www.linkedin.com/company/entov.