Astropreneurs: turning space-related ideas into viable businesses and promoting opportunities for entrepreneurs coming from space and non-space sectors. We will support entrepreneurs, startups and SMEs, coming from space and non-space sectors, to create viable business cases and have faster markets approaches by mentoring them on businesses and technical needs, helping them to access private and public funding, but also to overcome the financial, administrative and networking barriers that are now preventing them from more success in the commercial phases. Astropreneurs consortium is solid and sustainable, even at its constitution level. All partners, led by Instituto Pedro Nunes – Portugal, are spread across Europe and represent different types of stakeholders: Verhaert (BE), Brimatech Services GmbH (AT), Science and Technology Facilities Council – STFC (UK), Aerospace Valley (FR), Centrum für Satellitennavigation Hessen – CESAH (DE), CzechInvest (UK), and Knowledge Innovation Market – KIM (SP). The complementarity of skills and expertise gathered in the CSA, aligned with the unmatched geographical reach is a powerful differentiating characteristic of the consortium, together with the direct participation of the ESA BIC Network & ESA Brokers Network.

Climate change impacts are here and now. The impacts on people, prosperity and planet are already pervasive but unevenly distributed, as stated in the new EU Blueprint strategy (European Commission-EC, 2019). To reduce climate-related risks, the EC and the IPCC agree that transformational adaptation is essential. The TranformAr project aims to develop and demonstrate products and services to launch and accelerate large-scale and disruptive adaptive process for transformational adaptation in vulnerable regions and communities across Europe. The 6 TransformAr lighthouse demonstrators face a common challenge: water-related risks and impacts of climate change. Based on existing successful initiatives, the project will develop, test and demonstrate solutions and pathways, integrated in Innovation Packages, in 6 territories. Transformational pathways, including an integrated risk assessment approach are co-developed by means of 9 Transformational Adaptive Blocks. A set of 22 tested actionable adaptive solutions are tested and demonstrated, ranging from nature-based solutions, innovative technologies, financing, insurance and governance models, awareness and behavioral change solutions. The project team, led by the University of Antwerp, gathers 22 partners from 11 countries and a well-balanced mix of sectoral and adaptation experts (5 RTOs and 1 SME), paired with 6 territories (4 local authorities and 2 charities), 8 additional solutions providers and 1 EU water-related NPO specialized that will support to structure a European Community of practice. Massive resilience increase and acceleration of transformation adaptation will be fostered by clustering various investors, testing bankable solutions, and defining viable (non-)commercial exploitation strategy for the TransformAr solutions, products and services.

The SILENSE project will focus on using smart acoustic technologies and ultrasound in particular for Human Machine- and Machine to Machine Interfaces. Acoustic technologies have the main advantage of a much simpler, smaller, cheaper and easier to integrate transducer. The ambition of this project is to develop and improve acoustic technologies beyond state-of-the-art and extend its application beyond the mobile domain to Smart Home & Buildings and Automotive domains. In this project, it will be proven that acoustics can be used as a touchless activation and control mechanism, by improvement or development of different smart acoustic technology blocks (hardware, software and system level) and integrate these blocks at system level. At technology level, the SILENSE project will: - Adapt and improve cost, performance, directivity and power consumption of (MEMS) acoustic transducers (incl. testing and qualification) - Heterogeneously integrate arrays of acoustic transducers with other electronics, using advanced (3D) packaging concepts - Develop smart algorithms for acoustical sensing, localization and communication - Combine voice and gesture control by means of the same transducer(s) At application level the SILENSE project will: - Apply acoustical sensing for touchless activation/control of mobile devices, wearables and, more in general, IoT nodes. The project links to Smart Systems Integration (B4), and refers also to application application-related topics, such as Smart Mobility and Smart Society. The application scope of the developed technologies is broader and comprises more societal domains, such as smart home/buildings, smart factories (i.e. Smart Production) and even Smart Health. Furthermore, a clear cross reference with Semiconductor Process, Equipment and Materials (B1) is established in view of the heterogeneous integration of technology blocks. Conventional silicon technologies will be combined with printed (flexible, large area electronics).

POINT.IoT combines the strengths of EGNSS with the growing importance of IoT devices in our daily life in a make-it-work approach, organised by leading companies in their field, such as Verhaert, SpaceTec Partners, Cesah and Orange. The POINT.Cheetah programme scouts and selects 20 new IoT applications using GNSS technologies for a combined 3-month technical and business sprint with a multidisciplinary team of mentors. Each selected application receives on average 80 hours of support. The business sprint ensures the maturation of the innovative usages of GNSS/IoT for investors, whereas the technical sprint is a combination of technical coaching and hands-on product development support. The programme focusses on a rapid development of 20 demos for early technical validation. The top-2 teams receive a prize of EUR 20,000 each. The POINT.Kangeroo programme supports the teams with business training tools. The POINT.IoT Entrepreneur Playbook guides the sprints that the teams and mentors undertake but can help any GNSS/IoT developer in a do-it-yourself sprint. The POINT.MOOC teaches the business basics in a modern and interactive manner with a Massive Open Online Course. Each year the POINT.IoT track at a leading investor event allows the top-5 teams to pitch their business to a panel of investors and corporates. The selected teams receive one-on-one investor readiness training to enhance their success rate. The POINT.Partnerships programme develops the narrative and guides the implementation of a partnership programme between POINT.IoT teams and industrial stakeholders as development partners, suppliers, clients or investors. The POINT.IoT Success & Inspiration Stories form the basis of discussion with GNSS/IoT stakeholders, and showcases successful GNSS/IoT solutions. The partnership matchmaking helps the POINT.IoT portfolio companies to have an easy access to leading IoT brands, for validation, partnering, business development or sales.

Current research and practice on Open Innovation (OI) has not given emphasis on the ability of SMEs to develop and implement OI strategies - the lessons learned from large firms are not readily transferable to their context. INSPIRE aims to thoroughly investigate how OI is managed and organised in SMEs in order to leverage and expand the existing scattered initiatives and professionalize their services. The project seeks to understand in depth good practices of OI in SMEs across Europe, including the barriers they experience, the critical success factors and the open innovation ‘pathways’ they follow. Good practices will be identified in all varieties of SMEs in terms of economic context, innovation trajectory (e.g. both high-tech and low-tech SMEs) and stage of lifetime. The understanding of good practices will allow the design, development and validation of an Integrated Toolbox for OI in SMEs to enable the professional management of OI by SMEs in various kinds of open innovation initiatives (e.g. facilitated by large corporations, private-public partnerships). The Toolbox will include good practices, indicators and management modules to support the internal innovation activities of an SME and their interaction with OI partners. The Toolbox will be modular and it will include three prototypical scenarios of usage that can be flexibly adjusted to individual needs of SMEs. The Integrated Toolbox will be developed as a web platform and it will be validated through a series of pilots in real life OI projects carried out by SMEs across Europe. Moreover, the project will develop a deployment plan for the Open Innovation System to initiate an EU-wide strategic engagement of innovation stakeholders and spread the practices of OI. The consortium includes a variety of competencies to access the whole Open Innovation chain across a range of geographical, economic and SMEs’ contexts and includes academics, practitioners and intermediaries working with SMEs on Open Innovation.