"The challenges of European high-tech startups: Europe needs more innovative high-tech startup companies who can compete internationally. Only few companies have been founded in Europe that can be compared to e.g. Google or Genentech and also smaller-size success stories are rare. In contrast, the USA have produced thousands of high-growth companies in the last 40 years. Many of the successful American high-tech ventures have been founded out of universities by bachelor, master or PhD students, such as Microsoft, Yahoo or Facebook. European universities have not been able to transfer innovative inventions into high-growth companies due to a combination of cultural differences as much as a lack of resources dedicated to startup creation.Therefore, Europe has set ambitious goals to become a more entrepreneurial region through its Entrepreneurship 2020 Action Plan with the objective to remove existing obstacles and to revolutionize the culture of entrepreneurship in Europe.Through the European Venture Program (EVP) strategic partnership, the following European technical universities (DTU, TU/e, EPFL, TUM) and one Entrepreneurship Center (UnternehmerTUM), join forces to develop a unique entrepreneurship program for engineering schools: TUM is one of Europe’s leading research universities, with more than 500 professors, around 10,000 academic and non-academic staff, and 40,000 students. Its focus areas are the engineering sciences, natural sciences, life sciences and medicine, combined with economic and social sciences. TUM acts as an entrepreneurial university that promotes talents and creates value for society. In that, it profits from having strong partners in science and industry. TUM fosters a supportive environment for innovation with a market-oriented approach and to inspire their members – from students to alumni – to awaken their entrepreneurial spirit. It offers Startup Consulting, a 1000qm Incubator and a huge network. The four strategic areas are: CleanTech, MedTech. LifeScience and Information and Communication Technology. TUM is represented worldwide with a campus in Singapore as well as offices in Beijing, Brussels, Cairo, Mumbai, San Francisco, and São Paulo. Nobel Prize winners and inventors such as Rudolf Diesel, Carl von Linde, and Rudolf Mößbauer have done research at TUM. In 2006 and 2012 it won recognition as a German ""Excellence University."" In international rankings, TUM regularly places among the best universities in Germany. UnternehmerTUM is an affiliated institute and strategic component of “TUM – the Entrepreneurial University”. It is now one of the leading university-based centers for innovation and business creation in Europe. Activities of UnternehmerTUM cover all of the three phases pre-start-up, Startup and growth. UnternehmerTUM has its own venture capital fund, which provides early-stage venture capital. It targets high-technology Startups and supports them with market expertise, Startup experience and an active network of business partners. TU/e specializes in engineering science & technology. The university's education, research and knowledge valorisation contribute to the (fundamental) advancement of technical sciences and the development of technological innovations and the growth of wealth and prosperity both in its own region and beyond. TU/e has named three Strategic Area’s: Smart Mobility, Energy and Health and is well known for its collaboration with industrial partners Therefore, TU/e distinguishes- itself with the motto: “TU/e, where innovation starts“. EPFL is one of Europe’s most cosmopolitan technical university with students, professors and staff from over 120 nations. A dynamic environment, open to Switzerland and the world, EPFL is centered on its three missions: teaching, research and technology transfer. EPFL works together with an extensive network of partners including other universities and institutes of technology, developing and emerging countries, secondary schools and colleges, industry and economy, political circles and the general public, to bring about real impact for society.DTU is one of Europe’s leading technical universities with 19 departments and a large number of specialized centers and facilities. DTU Skylab is the cross-disciplinary hub for student innovation and entrepreneurship organized in the central administration of DTU. We help startups on all levels with coaching, acceleration programs, funding, international mobility, and network. We also facilitate collaboration on innovation between corporations and student and host entrepreneurship/prototyping related courses from all university departments. The main objective is to support entrepreneurship in a learning oriented context and facilitate network and collaboration across disciplines, organizations, and borders. Organizations in addition: big companies, SMEs, mentors, founders, alumni.(Due character limitation please see complete summary in Annex 0_2.project summary complete text)"

The project’s objective is the establishment of four cross-border operating “Scaleup Labs”. The Scaleup Labs are based on the ”living lab” concept and support qualifying scaleups in achieving “Proof of Scalability”. This proof is achieved when scaleups comply with all requirements of general technological, market, organizational and investor readiness, their innovation is adapted to specific customer need and successful scaleup-corporate relationship is established. “Scaleup4Europe”: five partners, four ecosystems: • Berchtesgadener Land Wirtschaftsservice, Germany, a regional economic development agency - project lead. • UnternehmerTUM Germany, a leading startup hub of the Technical University of Munich. • Pioneers, Austria, one of the largest start-up and investor networks across Europe. • Pomurski tehnoloski park, Slovenia, a deep tech support ecosystem and member of pan-European Digitial Innovation Hub network Agile Manufacturing and Robotics. • Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Serbia, the association of all enterprises, including startups in Serbia. The project partners propose to set up a Scaleup Lab in each ecosystem for a specific industry vertical. The Scaleup Labs will provide deep tech start-ups with a structured open innovation approach in which they can achieve cross-border market success, through first successful collaborations with corporate customers, investors and/or public institutions. The Scaleup Labs will bring together corporates with needs for innovation, scaleups with matching solutions, experts from research and the European network of specialized Digital Innovation Hubs and other existing services such as the Startup Europe one-stop-shop. The Scaleup Labs will detect innovators and develop programmes for startups ready to provide their solutions to new markets. This includes acceleration tools such as Scaleup Camps as well as Investor and Business Matching Tools to adapt innovations to specific enterprise demand.

The project analyses the market structures and drivers, obstacles and opportunities from scientific, technical, legal, ethical, governance and socioeconomic vantage points. The analysis is grounded in economic and political science theories on how service markets with public and private features can develop, and how innovations may succeed. The consortium offers a good cross-section of representation from various vantage points in the climate services market, complemented by expert knowledge on market research and innovation policy. The consortium has excellent connections to many climate service user types and other stakeholders. The study will engage a large diversity of stakeholders in many ways, especially through the explorative market development exercises employing different co-design approaches. Next to reporting based analysis of market functioning and solutions, the protocols developed in the explorative market development exercises are meant for replication at large scale.

Climate‐related tools, products, data and services may greatly contribute to climate change mitigation and adaptation. However, current strategies face knowledge gaps, lack of visibility of climate services, and low awareness of key potential customers for using key information and the associated economic benefits. This reality triggers the need and potential for developing a global market for climate services. The ‘MArket Research for a Climate services Observatory’ (MARCO) proposal gathers market research firms, climate scientists, climate services practitioners, and innovation actors, around the Climate-KIC, to provide a detailed insight into the market for climate services in Europe, in line with the challenge of enabling market growth outlined in the EC’s “R&I roadmap for climate services”. The project’s key objectives are to: assess the EU market of climate services; validate and enrich the market assessment with case studies; forecast future user needs and assess market growth until 2030; unveil opportunities and promote market growth. To achieve this, MARCO will build on a phased approach with feedback loops between several methodologies to ensure validation of findings. This will start with defining the framework for market characterisation, followed by exhaustive, integrated market research combining climate vulnerability analysis deriving into potential market estimation, confronted to actual transactional market quantification, qualitative surveys, and nine case studies on specific sectors and regions. This will be followed by a gap analysis and innovation modelling to reveal the untapped market. A foresight exercise will then outline market growth till 2030. Finally, recommendations for market observation and facilitation will be expressed. Stakeholders will be involved at all points of the process, with a continuous dialogue network and two workshops. The Climate KIC and partners will ensure sound dissemination of results, all made public.