The importance of exploitation in Horizon Europe Projects

Many researchers apply to Horizon Europe with excellent scientific concepts, envisioning breakthroughs and discoveries in their respective fields. But what many researchers also often fail to consider is what happens next. What happens to the results when the funding ends and the consortium members turn their attention to other activities?

The natural response from researchers will often be simply more research, secure more funding and explore the results further. There are certainly likely to be open questions that still need answering when the project concludes, and for some projects, this is the appropriate follow-up. However, the purpose of Horizon Europe is to support research and innovation to achieve positive impacts for Europe and the world. To achieve this, Horizon Europe projects must not only produce results with the potential for great impact in the right hands. They must also deliver those results to the right hands, in a shape that those hands can use. This makes the consideration of how project results will be exploited a crucial element of project planning.

Exploitation =/= Exploitative

The term exploitation often strikes a mistaken moral objection in researchers who are unfamiliar with Horizon Europe. The term exploitation has a negative connotation in daily use, frequently being used to refer to the unfair treatment of someone or something for the advantage of another, such as the exploitation of workers. This negative association sometimes causes researchers who take pride in their work to innately oppose the notion of exploiting it. But the reality is that Horizon Europe uses the second definition of exploitation: to use and benefit from a resource.

In Horizon Europe, exploitation does not refer to anything cruel or greedy. Rather, it simply refers to how the results will be used to achieve the desired impacts. If researchers do not suggest when proposing a project how their results may be used, then the European Commission cannot have confidence that the results will be effectively utilised. Effective exploitation defines a Horizon Europe project's ultimate success, and a project without a clear exploitation plan is unlikely to achieve the desired impact.

Commercialisation

The form of exploitation that will spring to mind for most people will be commercialisation. Commercialisation is certainly the dominant exploitation route for most Horizon Europe projects for a variety of reasons. Commercialisation doesn’t only generate revenue for the exploiting company. It stimulates economic growth in Europe, creates jobs, and enhances the competitiveness of European industries. A key priority of Horizon Europe is to establish Europe as a leader in strategic scientific areas and strengthen Europe’s autonomy and delivering innovations straight to European companies is an excellent way to achieve this. International companies may benefit as well, but take care that Europe companies are the foremost beneficiaries. Commercialisation also indicates that the project is producing results that are not only innovative but also practical and beneficial to society and offers long-term sustainability potential, as generated income can fund further R&D and innovation. This further allows for the scaling up of successful innovations, making them accessible to a broader audience, further maximising impact.

Altogether, the commercialisation of results achieves many of the impacts sought by the European Commission in most research areas. When planning a Horizon Europe project, be sure to carefully consider the commercial potential your results may have, which may not always be immediately obvious.

Other Forms of Exploitation

Whilst many projects culminate in results that can feasibly be commercialised, this is certainly not universally applicable. Some areas of research offer little opportunity for commercialisation, such as studies of human behaviour, the environment, or public health. Exploitation is no less important in such projects. In fact, it is perhaps even more essential that exploitation be well considered and described in such projects, as there is a greater risk of results going unused if there is no commercial entity with financial incentives to use the results. In such cases, other forms of exploitation to achieve impact must be considered.

Other non-commercial exploitation routes include further research, policy influence, standards development, and achieving a direct societal impact with the result generated. If these are the appropriate exploitation routes for a project, don’t make the mistake of being too unspecific. If further research will be enabled, specify what research and how the results enable it. If influencing policy and standards, specify which policymakers you will connect with. If achieving direct societal impact, clarify how the activities in the project bring the results straight to the people that need them.

Also, remember that projects are not limited to a single form of exploitation, and different results from the same project will often be exploited differently. A device developed in a project may be commercialised, but the experimental results that guided that development could be the basis for a follow-up research project or may inform policymakers about safe thresholds for the use of a material. When planning a Horizon Europe project, be sure to carefully consider each result as a separate exploitable that may be used differently to achieve impact.

The Different Pillars

The work programme a project contributes towards is also an important guide to what exploitation in a project should look like. Each pillar of Horizon Europe has its own flavour of exploitation, and you should ensure your exploitation plans align with the programme.

Pillar 1 aims to reinforce and expand the excellence of the EU's science base, supporting and developing talent in Europe. As a result, commercialisation is a less dominant form of exploitation, and direct societal impact is exceedingly rare. Rather, Pillar 1 project exploitation tends to focus on further research opportunities. By developing research talent and infrastructure without a focus on the immediate use of the results, these projects often instead lay the foundations for future research that will achieve more direct impacts.

Pillar 2, which makes up the bulk of Horizon Europe projects, aims to address major societal challenges and boost EU industrial competitiveness. With such a broad array of projects aiming to achieve such a wide array of impacts, the choice of exploitation becomes highly context-dependent. The flavour of exploitation can vary hugely between different clusters, and between different destinations. Consider the call topic’s expected outcomes well and whether the planned exploitation route would achieve the expected impacts, when preparing a project for Pillar 2.

Pillar 3 aims to foster high-risk, high-reward disruptive innovations, especially those with the potential to create new markets. Commercialisation will dominate exploitation plans in Pillar 3 projects, and successful projects with no plans to commercialise will be exceedingly rare. For almost any Pillar 3 project, it will be of paramount importance to provide the most detailed plans possible for how the innovation will be brought to market in the years following the project.

Summary

The importance of exploitation in Horizon Europe lies in the necessity for researchers to plan how to use their project results effectively both during the project and after the funding ends. While many researchers focus solely on continued exploration and funding, the European Commission emphasises delivering impactful results that benefit society. It is thus essential that researchers think beyond the timeframe of the project, to what comes next, and can offer plausible suggestions of what further activities will be required. Ultimately, a well-thought-out exploitation plan is crucial for a project's success and its potential to make a lasting impact.