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European Innovation Council

Business Acceleration Services

Business Acceleration Services

All EIC supported projects and companies get access to coaching, mentoring, partnering and other EIC Business Acceleration Services

Business Acceleration Services

Under Horizon Europe, the EIC support goes far beyond funding, and it aims at accelerating EIC innovations and growth of top deep tech companies.To further leverage the EIC investments, as EIC funded researcher, innovator or entrepreneur, you will be provided with access to a range of tailor-made EIC Business Acceleration Services (BAS) at any stage of development of your activities and of the EIC research and innovation cycle. 

    Who can benefit and what services are offered?

    All the EIC Awardees (from the EIC Accelerator, EIC Transition, EIC Pathfinder, and Women TechEU awardees (implemented under the ‘European Innovation Ecosystems) have access to EIC Business Acceleration Services (BAS).

    EIC Accelerator applicants invited to prepare a full proposal (successfully passed Step 1) can use 3 days of (remote) coaching and get support with the preparation of the full proposal (Step 2 application).

    Some of the services are also available to companies receiving the Seal of Excellence as well as to innovators and companies coming from other European or national initiatives that have entered into a specific agreement with the EIC.

      EIC Community platform

      These services are available through the EIC Community platform. They are either developed directly by the EIC or provided through the EIC Ecosystem Partners.

      The EIC Business Acceleration Services are structured around three main pillars: 

      • access to coaches, mentors, expertise and training 
      • access to global partners (leading corporates, investors, procurers, distributors, clients) 
      • access to innovation ecosystem and peers 
      EIC Community platform

      Access global partners and innovation ecosystems and apply to Business Acceleration Services

      Enter the platform

      A. Access to coaches, mentors, expertise and training

      EIC researchers, innovators and entrepreneurs will be able to benefit from tailor-made coaching, mentoring, expertise and training delivered by specialised providers and adapted to their innovation stage. 

      • Access will be provided to relevant entrepreneurial and innovation/IP strategy trainings, prototyping workshops, business plan development-oriented summer schools, boot camps, incubators and accelerators. 

      Programmes:

      EIC researchers, innovators and entrepreneurs can benefit from tailor-made coaching, mentoring, expertise and training delivered by specialised providers and adapted to their innovation stage.

      Female members of EIC-funded projects, from researchers to entrepreneurs, wishing to bring their research to market, advance their business skills and/or take over leadership positions in business development, can join the EIC Women Leadership Programme (EIC WLP) to strengthen their entrepreneurial skills and expand their network. Each participant will work with a personal mentor and a business coach, facilitating the reflection on her career path and new business opportunities.  

      The Tech to Market (T2M BAS) offer is designed to help researchers and innovators from projects funded under EIC Pathfinder and Transition funding schemes in transition from lab to market and to develop the pathway towards commercialisation (e.g. by start-up/spin-off creation) or other forms of technology transfer. 

      B. Access to global partners (leading corporates, investors, procurers) 

      The Business Acceleration Services facilitate cooperation and co-creation with international business partners: leading corporates, investors, procurers, distributors, clients. 

      This includes: 

      • exploration of commercialisation potential with industry 
      • dedicated and impact focused matchmaking events (e.g., Corporate Days, Procurers Days, Investor Days) 
      • venture client model 
      • structured pilot and trials collaborations with corporates and private and public innovation procurers. 

      EIC funded SMEs will be offered specific support when expanding to new markets within Europe and abroad in the form of participation in global business trade fairs, visiting major European innovation hubs and specific soft-landing programmes.

      The EIC will facilitate collaboration with (co-) investors for the EIC Community. The service will be supported through a dedicated matching platform, for both investments and tailor-made services including mentoring, strategic advice, curated presentation to investors’ networks as well as investment readiness preparation and pitching sessions. 

      Programmes:

      The EIC Corporate Partnership Programme aims to facilitate business collaboration between EIC beneficiaries and European corporates. This programme launches recurrent calls for EIC beneficiaries to respond to challenges of the largest corporations in Europe.

      The EIC is embarking on its new and reinforced Innovation Procurement support programme that is called Strategic Use of Innovation Procurement.

      The main goal of this unique programme is to facilitate the access of top-notch EIC Innovators to procurement markets in Europe and at global level, ensuring thus increased market opportunities for these innovative SMEs and start-ups and contributing, at the same time, to their scaling up

      The EIC Overseas Trade Fairs 2.0 Programme (OTF) supports EIC beneficiaries to promote their commercialisation strategy in foreign markets and leverage business opportunities at the most popular trade fairs, strengthening the EU innovation brand around the world. Selected EIC-funded SMEs, startups and scale-ups from EU Member States and associated countries will have access to the programme.

      The Co-Investment Support by the EIC to the selected beneficiaries is a key step in ensuring that the beneficiaries become investor ready and can gain access to the best co-investment opportunities from the private sector. EIC facilitate beneficiaries’ access to the investors through its Co-Investment platform (total of around 800 investors). Co-investing in companies carefully selected by the EIC is a great investment opportunity as well as an opportunity to support breakthrough, market-creating innovations across Europe and beyond.

      The EIC Scale Up 100 is a forthcoming action to support 100 companies from the portfolio of EIC beneficiaries and other national and European innovation programmes to become global tech champions. It will help companies develop their corporate and leadership strategies, reach strategic investors and partners, expand internationally and obtain access to networking and peer exchange.

      Unless specified otherwise, all above services are open to all EIC awardees and Seal of Excellence companies based on a proposal and, when relevant, selection process. The process involves the publication of a proposal by an interested EIC company or project on the EIC Community Platform and, depending on the type of service sought, a pre-selection by business partners/experts can be applied. 

      C. Access to innovation ecosystem and peers

      The EIC ambition is to engage partners from across the European innovation ecosystem within the EIC Community, to benefit from cross-fertilisation and diversity inspiring innovation and creativity. It aims to stimulate unprecedented and unforeseeable encounters between peer inventors, researchers, innovators and entrepreneurs as well as other actors from the ecosystem, including corporates, investors, business angels, mentors and coaches, innovation procurers, innovation agencies, business associations, clusters, accelerators, incubators, technology transfer offices and many more.  

      From 2023, the EIC BAS services will be expanded through EIC Ecosystem Partners. EIC BAS services provided by EIC Ecosystem Partners includes access to existing incubation and acceleration programmes as well as services specifically designed in collaboration with EIC. These services are offered to EIC Awardees free of charge or on favorable conditions. This approach allows EIC Awardees to access the best services available across Europe while enabling EIC Ecosystem Partners to provide their services at European level

      Programme:

      With the Ecosystem Partnerships, the EIC aims at being an active connector in the European Innovation Ecosystem. The EIC seeks to partner up with different actors able to provide to the EIC beneficiaries and Seal of Excellence holders access to services such as, incubation, acceleration, growth and scale up. The programme will try to meet the SMEs needs in terms of their sectorial knowledge, business development, networking and market knowledge.

      Work with us

      The European Innovation Council is open for new collaborations with other business enablers and the largest and most innovative Corporations in Europe. 

      Corporations, public and private buyers, ecosystem players and experts are invited to collaboration. Read more:

      Calendar

      June 2023

      July 2023

      September 2023

      • EIC OTF - IFA Berlin, 1-5 September 2023, Berlin, Germany
      • EIC OTF - Gastech, 11-14 September 2023, Singapore

      October 2023

      • EIC OTF - GITEX, 16-20 October 2023, Dubai, UAE

       

      An overview of all past events can be found on the EIC Community Platform. 

      FAQs

      Find all the answers on the Business Acceleration Services in the FAQ section

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