We celebrated with sercobe the event
"european opportunities for product innovation"

On November 19, 2019, the event “European Opportunities for Product Innovation” took place, which we organized together with Sercobe. The event was held with the aim of presenting the keys to European funding for companies, from now until the end of the H2020 framework programme and to advance the main product development lines of the new Horizon Europe programme (2021-2027).

The meeting was opened by the Director General of Sercobe, Juan Ramón Durán. After the initial presentation, our colleague Rodrigo Sanz, SPM of the EU Projects area of Euro-Funding, spoke about the news related to the new Horizon Europe Framework Programme, going into detail on the different pillars and the strategic priorities of the European Commission to qualify a project as eligible for funding.

Peter Ardnt and José María Martínez, CEO and Consultant Engineer at Oim Sweden respectively, presented their paper “taking product development to the next level”, in which they commented that the main objective of IOM as a company is “to close the gap in product development, supporting all the needs to bring ideas to a final product on the market”. In addition, they highlighted the situation of the Spanish market with a scenario with great growth possibilities within innovation, adding that “the combination of Spain as an excellent country to obtain financing for innovation with SME Instruments and Sweden as a country that generates innovative ideas, forms an ideal scenario for possible collaborations”.

Next, Luis Guerra, CDTI’s national representative for Innovation in SMEs in H2020, addressed in his speech “News in H2020 near-market programmes for 2019-2020” the H2020 EIC Accelerator and its evolution of the H2020 SME instrument in view of its transition to the next Horizon Europe programme. In addition, Guerra announced the “Fast track to innovation” programme, which continues until H2020, from which he stressed that “it is ideal for bringing technologies closer to the market in small consortium projects”.

Finally, Fernando Utrilla, Technical Coordinator of R+D+i Projects at UNE, spoke on standardisation in innovation projects and highlighted that one of the most important challenges of R+D+i activities is to ensure that their results are successful in the market. Utrilla emphasized that using standardization to strengthen these results, transferring knowledge and creating confidence in users, “is a simple and effective way to enhance the impact that these activities reach beyond the groups that develop them, especially in industry, society and public administrations”.