Innovation, management and business mindset at NEANIAS.

The European Landscape of Innovation can be characterised by low level of investment capability and intention to involve investment, as well as the low level of understanding of R&D trends and funding opportunities in the SME sector. As for the R&D networks, there is a disconnection and the entrepreneurial attitude of commercialisation is also lagging behind. In general, public R&D is not connected with business, which makes the utilisation of research results burdensome, and it requires high cost to fail.

NEANIAS, with its unique approach to involve innovation management and business development, focuses on creating novel services and foster research activities on Atmosphere, Underwater & Space research areas. The Consortium has set the policies and procedures to follow in order to create high level and novel research results and services within the project.

The project results are deriving from all three main sectors, namely Underwater, Atmospheric and Space research activities. The TRL level of each of the innovations should reach TR9, building on the already existing status of TRL6. By means of the definition of Innovation and IPR Management Plan, the project aims to provide the main elements, structure, and procedures on how to support the technological development from TRL6 to TRL8, by taking the technology trends into consideration, and manage data and collaboration within the project partners.

Therefore, our focus is twofold:

  • On one hand, from an innovation management point of view, the main activities, risks, and any necessary elements are set in order to evaluate and collect the research results and organise them in a proper way, as part of NEANIAS project management
  • On the other hand, to set the main elements of open access policy, IPR Management, where the procedures are set. IPR management is a crucial part of NEANIAS and affects the handling of various elements: software, data, science/research knowledge, business and innovation cases.

NEANIAS aims overall to set basic rules and procedures on exchanging and handling information among the project partners, which help to deliver the expected project results from a technological and business point of view. All the procedures are supported by the IPR actions, for the protection of knowledge, technology and business concepts of the project partners. Data handling and managing IPR issues, as well as the restoring data in an organized manner, support an efficient software license management. Besides, the software licence management includes all activities related to adopting Free and Open Source Licences in order to implement NEANIAS services on a high level.

NEANIAS Innovation is coordinated by the Innovation Manager and supported by the Innovation Management Team. The management activities aim to identify possibilities, collecting relevant information, cooperate and share relevant data with partners, stakeholders, identify possible models to form collaboration and create added value through identified business opportunities. Based on the principles of open innovation, the innovation management team within NEANIAS, focuses on involving external knowledge into the development process of the technologies, services. This external knowledge may come from other stakeholders, partners, the end-users, and from other sources, in order to foster interdisciplinarity of the researchers. 

Innovation Management in NEANIAS serves two needs. Firstly, the exchange and handle of essential information among participants that will allow the delivery of the project’s results as well as elevate the overall work and project team capacities.

Secondly, the effective protection and sharing of knowledge, technology, and business concepts among project participants. NEANIAS lays the foundation for innovation management on the following pillars:

  • The Consortium Agreement that forges those principles into actionable rules of the consortium.
  • The presence of an entitled Innovation Manager with enough experience in the domain and a task force behind the role that can seek innovation in several directions and facilitate the knowledge and innovation transfer between the partners as well as outside the project.
  • The embedding of innovation management activities in all project processes and bodies, like technology / research / business-oriented boards and meetings.

For all the cases, it is very important to emphasize the gap between the academia, on the one side, and the industry and the market on the other side. A business mindset, that includes both data and innovation management and the exploitation action plan, is the driver that allows to connect and to complement both worlds in a dynamic and productive way throughout the lifetime of the project.

As the project embraces innovation, business value chain establishment and open access, numerous challenges arise with respect to the management of the information, issues and opportunities around those. With innovation management and exploitation, the business mindset in the commercialisation of research results is brought in.

 

March 2020.

 

EU Flag  NEANIAS is a Research and Innovation Action funded by European Union under Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme via grant agreement No.863448.