RInnoValleys is a project that aims to address the challenges and disparities faced by EU regions in accessing the European Innovation Council (EIC) and fully leveraging its benefits for their innovation ecosystems. The project focuses on creating a transnational joint action plan to enhance the capabilities of these regions to connect with the EIC ecosystem and foster inclusive, gender-diverse, and connected innovation ecosystems in line with the New European Innovation Agenda. The project adopts the Quadruple Helix Model, the participatory approach, peer learning and best practice sharing, joint transnational action plan development, capacity building, and implementation support, communication, and dissemination to achieve its objectives. The project will engage stakeholders from government, academia, industry, and civil society in each region and cover 5 EU countries, including rural areas, ensuring gender equality objectives. The project's methodology aims to ensure that the solutions developed are relevant, inclusive, and responsive to the unique needs and priorities of the participating regions. By combining these concepts, models, and assumptions, the RInnoValleys project methodology aims to address the challenges faced by EU regions in accessing the EIC, foster collaboration and knowledge exchange, and enhance the innovation capabilities of the regions. Ultimately, the project seeks to create a more cohesive, connected, and balanced innovation ecosystem within the European Union, ensuring that all regions can more equally thrive and prosper in the global innovation landscape.

Europe is facing major economic challenges that require an ambitious economic policy for the 21st century. The EU has set out its vision for Europe's social market economy in the Europe 2020 strategy, which aims at confronting our structural weaknesses through progress in three mutually reinforcing priorities : • smart growth, based on knowledge and innovation, • sustainable growth, promoting a more resource efficient, greener and competitive economy, • inclusive growth, fostering a high employment economy delivering economic, social and territorial cohesion. MANUNET III, as a continuation of MANUNET II, is aligned with the European priorities and pretends to create a smart sustainable growth in the European manufacturing sector by coordinating the research and innovation efforts in the field of advanced manufacturing with a special focus in the key areas of new production processes, adaptive manufacturing systems and technologies for the factory of the future. The project will also reinforce the territorial cohesion through an extended collaboration network. The consortium pretends to respond to the actual economic crisis by promoting the transnational research, innovation and entrepreneurship in the industrial sector, especially in the SMEs, which are the backbone of Europe's economy. Through this strategic and integrated approach to innovation in advanced manufacturing, MANUNET III pretends to maximise European, national and regional research and innovation potential.

Horizon 2020 call “Enhancing the innovation management capacity of SMEs” proposes advising services to SMEs with the objective of increasing and accelerating the economic returns from innovation. The current proposal fully describes these services and proves ACCIÓ’s capacity to successfully deliver them. The services will be provided to two specific groups of enterprises: beneficiaries of the SME instrument and, SMEs with significant innovation activities and a high potential for internationalisation. As the current coordinator of the Catalan node of the EEN (also for 2015-2020), ACCIÓ is specialised in promoting innovation and internationalisation among SMEs and has implemented several successful programmes over the last 20 years; for instance it is currently providing advise services for the period 2015-2016 with IMPRove, Innovation Health Check (IHC) and KAM methodologies with an EU financed project called INNCAT. The experience obtained, especially since the implementation of INNCAT, has given to our team of experts a deeper knowledge of these services and therefore we are proposing that a minimum of 80 services will be provided in the period of 2017-2018 for enhancing the innovation management capacity of SMEs. It is 42% more services than INNCAT1516. The proposed staff is fully committed to deliver the proposed services and is trained in IMPR3ove methodology and Innovation Health Check (IHC) and have a broad and extensive expertise in innovation and business support and, management. Moreover, 6 of the proposed 9 staff members have intervened in the implementation of INNCAT for the delivery of KAM and IMPR3ove services during 2014-2016. Therefore they are fully capable to deliver the services described and successfully advise SMEs.

Horizon 2020 call “Enhancing the innovation management of SMEs” proposes the offering of mentoring and coaching services to SMEs with the objective of increasing and accelerating the economic returns from innovation. The current proposal describes in detail the services focused on enhancing innovation management capacities of SMEs and proves ACCIÓ’s capacity to successfully deliver such services. The service will be provided to two specific groups of companies: beneficiaries of the SME instrument and, SMEs with significant innovation activities and a high potential for internationalisation. The minimum number of 7-day packages to be delivered are 20, although depending on the number of beneficiaries of the SME instrument up to 32 7-day packages could be developed. As coordinator of the Catalan node of the Enterprise Europe Network, ACCIÓ offers a wide range of innovation services to SMEs. ACCIÓ is specialised in promoting innovation and internationalisation among SMEs and has implemented several successful programmes over the last 20 years. In 2013 ACCIÓ's innovation advisors visited 100 SMEs for the first time, managed more than 4.000 expression of interest for technology transfer or partner search and reached more than 3.000 people through its monthly newsletter “EU R&D&I opportunities”. The proposed INNCAT team is fully committed in the delivery of the project, is trained in IMP3rove methodology and have a broad and extensive expertise in innovation and business support and management.

In RETRIEVE we aim to combine PV upstream value chain organizations with beyond state-of-the-art recycling processes and techniques to improve circularity within the PV sector. RETRIEVE targets the upcycling of the components of the End of Life (EoL) solar panels, enhancing the material quality to meet current requirements for re-introduction into the PV value chain. RETRIEVE will increase the circularity and minimize the environmental impact of the PV industry by developing and demonstrating cost effective recycling technologies for the different components of a solar module; recycle glass to current PV specifications, purify production waste and EoL silicon to solar grade quality, recover silver and heavy metals, and polymer valorization with carbon capture. The final goal is to demonstrate a closed-loop recycling process where recycled glass as well as silicon is re-used in state-of-the-art solar module production, turning the EoL PV panels into sources of new raw materials for the PV manufacture industry. In addition, future PV waste streams for EoL and production waste will be forecasted, and the market potential will be evaluated. By lowering the financial burden of material recovery and increasing the value after recovery, RETRIEVE makes the overall module recycling process more profitable, and the project opens new paths for commercialization. Business cases and market introduction strategies will be developed for a selection of the processes and products.