Exploitation and innovation routes in Horizon Europe projects

Horizon Europe welcomes innovation in all its forms. You do not have to be an innovation expert to clearly describe two things – what is new in your concept and project overall and how it will change anything to the better. It is that easy and still not that much. For many years now expertise in innovation (including exploitation and IPR management) is needed in all Horizon Europe projects. How to capture the results? How to validate these and analyse their innovation potential? How to identify breakthrough innovation, incremental innovation, social innovation, disruptive innovation – specify technological or societal technology readiness level? Just to mention a few questions that an innovation adviser could help answering.

The IP Helpdesk is a very useful source for information as well, as it provides free training on this topic. But you will need specific support during proposal writing as well as implementation. When it comes to the coordinator, the technology transfer office (or equivalent department) shall be involved from very early stages, when you develop the concept, identify the needs and link to these results the project shall develop. At partner level, the same is true if your organisation is part of the development of a key result. Because “results lead to impact”. You develop innovations that will make things better and that is why you should remember two important legal obligations from the Model Grant Agreement:

• "Beneficiaries which have received funding under the grant must —up to four years after the end of the action—use their best efforts to exploit their results directly or to have them exploited indirectly by another entity, in particular through transfer or licensing."
• "Beneficiaries shall disseminate their results as soon as it is feasible, in a publicly available format, subject to any restrictions due to the protection of intellectual property, security rules or legitimate interests."

Thus, when the innovation adviser captured all results, analysed the innovation potential, specific exploitation strategies must be developed closely linked with dissemination and communication actions, and making sure the full innovation capacity of the consortium members is used to achieve maximum success. All these can be developed by a team of experienced people and organisational teams. When you already have a running project, EC tools and services are also available free of charge that help you to maximise your impact.

This article is written by Gabriella Lovász, Managing Director of Europa Media Trainings.