General Objectives

The overall concept of the ACTTiVAte project is to support innovation in SMEs and foster the smart reindustrialization of Europe.

• Foster cross-sectoral innovation among SMEs allocating around 85% of the project budget to SMEs.

• Generation of new value chains and development of emerging indus-tries by implementing strategies that allow clusters to lead the engage-ment of SMEs in activities intended to create new services and products.

• Set up strategies to achieve stable growth of cross-sectoral and cross-bor-der innovation beyond the project.

Specific Objectives

• Facilitate the emergence of cross-sector new value chains resulting from the analysis and assessment of advanced technologies among four sec-tors with strong synergies.

• Establish methodologies for durable cross-sectoral collaboration across different regions in Europe.

• Support the development of innovation projects driven by SMEs from di-fferent sectors and improve their business environment.

Funding

ACTTiVAte offers direct funding of innovative SME projects through call for proposal processes. It is expected to fund around 30 projects up to 50000€ which must be focused on the technology transfer between the sectors Aerospace, Agro-food, Health and ICT. The process of selecting and funding the SME projects would be: • Publication of the call for proposal work programme.• Selection of the SMEs grant receipients.• Development of the SMEs project • Financial viability of the selected projects will be ensured. • SMEs should report the development and evolution of the projects. • Analysis of results of projects developed by SMEs.

The development phase of the SMEs project will last 12 months. It will be divided in two phases:

• Develop the feasibility plan of the project during first 3 months which will be financed up to 10000€.

• Develop the prototype within the restant period (9 months).

Impacts

• Enhance SMEs budgets for innovation• Leverage effect on EU funding in upgrading the competitiveness of SMEs• Incorporate cross and open innovation processes to SMEs• Improvement of business training of managers and entrepreneurs• Monitoring of SMEs project development• Improve financial strength of supported SMEs • Creation of competitive value chains across the EU • Development of competitive advantage gaining new markets in the in-

ternational arena.• Technology transfer to related sectors• SMEs integration in new value chains• Generate direct and indirect employment • Enhance the long-term environment for competitiveness

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