With these grants, the successful proposals will be able to analyse potential markets and ways to commercialise products, assess technology level and consolidate intellectual property rights, often with the goal of creating a start-up or spin-off.
This Innovation Launchpad call received a record number of proposals with 118 submitted. The 35 winning projects include; higher education institutes (23%), SMEs (38%), research organisations (23%) and private organisations (17%). Some of the higher education institutes will focus on bridging the gap from research prototypes to pre-commercialisation with the creation of spin–off companies.
Examples of projects awarded include:
the investigation of market opportunities for mid-air haptic texture generation, a technology that allows virtualisation and digitisation of mid-air touch interactions, enabling, for example, touching holograms;
the commercialisation of a software that allows fast, non-invasive 3D visualisation of several information on the bladder in real-time, enabling the early diagnosis of bladder cancer;
the development of a business and action plan for using ultrathin carbon nanomembranes in batteries and fuel cell applications, leading to smaller, more powerful, and more reliable energy storage devices, disrupting the current market.
As part of the EIC Pathfinder programme, all beneficiaries will have the opportunity to join the EIC community platform and to have access to business acceleration support and coaching services provided by the EIC.
Background
The Innovation Launchpad aims to turn results from EIC Pathfinder funded projects into genuine economic and societal innovations. It supports projects with short duration (up to 18 months), a fixed budget of €100.000 and the common objective of getting closer to market.
The fully-fledged EIC to be launched soon under Horizon Europe, the new EU research and innovation programme, will offer transition activities for Pathfinder projects, building on the experience of the Innovation Launchpad, but with greater flexibility.
Details
- Publication date
- 5 February 2021