The European Innovation Council Pathfinder: the new Challenges for 2021

The European Innovation Council

As already reported in our Magazine (in the last 11th March edition) the European Innovation Council has been launched in a official webconference on 18th March 2021 by the European Commission. The EIC is intended to support innovation in all its phases across Europe, since research and development, to validation and technology demonstration, scaling up, and access to market. Its main beneficiaries are researchers, innovation experts, investors, startups, SMEs. EIC is provided with a budget of more than €10 billion for 20212027, to become a one-stop-shop for innovators throughout Europe. Governance of EIC is managed by a EIC Board, with independent members appointed from the world of innovation (entrepreneurs, researchers, investors, corporates and others from the innovation ecosystem). Furthermore, EIC funding is managed under the leadership of EIC Programme Managers who develop visions for innovation and technology breakthroughs and steer portfolios of projects to achieve these goals. Another specific feature of the EIC is that it provides funding for individual companies (mainly startups and SMEs) through both grants and investments. The investments currently take the form of direct equity or quasi-equity investments and are managed by the EIC Fund.

The Pilot Phase

Until 2020 there has been a pilot phase, to experiment a centralised management for direct support to innovators throughout Europe. Results of the EIC pilot phase, have been: - over 430 projects on Future and Emerging Technologies, involving over 2700 partners. - over 5,700 startups and SMEs, who have raised over €5 billion in follow up investments (3 euro for every euro from the EU budget) and on average, more than doubled the number of employees in a 2 year period. To search for projects, SMEs and startups, supported by the EIC pilot phase, you can browse in the EIC geo-database here.

The Pathfinder Initiative

In the EIC Workprogramme EIC published on march 2021, a yearly work programme, where all initiatives, objectives and funding schemes available for the current years are all described. Among them, the Pathfinder Initiative is aimed at sustaining projects inspired by visions for future breakthrough technologies or scientific innovations. Pathfinder funds welcome the high-risk / high gain and interdisciplinary cutting-edge science collaborations that underpin technological breakthroughs. Regarding to eligibility conditions, applicants participating in EIC Pathfinder projects are typically visionary scientists, entrepreneurial researchers and, research organisations, start-ups, high-tech SMEs and industrial stakeholders. Projects typically involve consortia of researchers and other partners from at least three different countries, but there are also opportunities for individual teams and small consortia (two partners). Grants of up to 3 to 4 million euro support early stage development of future technolo- gies up to proof of concept.