The Innovative Enterprise week SOFIA 2018 (IEWSofia2018) will plan, prepare and organize a 1 day conference, the “Innovative Enterprise week SOFIA 2018 - Financial instruments fostering Research and Innovation” to raise awareness of the potential for the financial instruments, facilities and accompanying measures launched, in particular, under Horizon 2020 to enhance access to finance for research and innovation. The conference will: - Ensure proper awareness and popularization of the financial instruments, especially among SMEs and midcaps, financial intermediaries (banks as well as risk capital funds including private investors and corporate investors); - Create interactions possible between these financial instruments, COSME's, European Structural and Investment Funds (ESIF), the European Fund for Strategic Investments (EFSI), instruments at national and local level as well as with the European Innovation Council (EIC) pilot - Bring together the main stakeholders (EU, national and regional Policy makers, Financial intermediaries, representatives from Research, Innovation and Business) to discuss the best uptake of the available financial instruments and the improvement of existing and development of new financial instruments that will support R&I in the upcoming years. - Shade lights on important happenings, initiatives and announcements related to Research & Innovation and particularly on the financial instruments resulting to support these new initiatives The conference will be organised by ahe named beneficiary (Tech Tour Global eood) and its linked third party (Europe Unlimited). Tech Tour Global EOOD and Europe Unlimited, both working together and supporting SMEs and Midcaps to connect with investors and have large expertise in organising events bringing together these stakeholders.

The overall aim of ShapingBio is to support and accelerate bioeconomy innovation and the deployment of new knowledge in the EU and its member states. ShapingBio aims to provide evidence-based and concrete information and recommendations for better policy alignment and stakeholder actions to realize the cross-sectoral potential of the bioeconomy and to reduce the fragmentation across bio-based sectors and food system and policies across regions, domains and governance levels. These actions contribute significantly to the bioeconomy strategy and Action Plan, the farm to fork strategy, the EU Green Deal policy priorities and the EU's Climate ambition for 2030 and 2050. For that purpose, ShapingBio aims to create a better understanding and information basis of the bioeconomy innovation eco-system by providing a comprehensive mapping and analysis of initiatives, structures, policy instruments and key gaps related to the topics policy and governance, applied R&D and technology transfer, (cross-sectoral) collaboration and financing across the EU macro-regions and different sectors. This will be carried out in close collaboration with various types of stakeholders from different sectors, by ensuring the involvement of all the relevant actors. Multi-actor groups will be set up to support policy advice design, but also to propose new forms of matchmaking, networking and knowledge-transfer. Those propositions will be implemented and tested in around twenty events. Based on these actions, recommendations for an effective governance in terms of policy instrument and their mixes will be derived as well as guidelines for different stakeholder groups for better collaboration and exploitation of bioeconomy innovations. Follow-up events will be conducted, to ensure that the recommendations are understood, actively reflected and implemented into stakeholders' activities and action plans to foster the deployment of bio-based innovations.

Only 5% of European start-ups scale-up and pursue the position of world tech leaders. The growth barriers are high for truly high-risk deep-tech innovators, the main target of EIC instruments. Deep-tech innovators struggle to get required capital at the different stages of their lifecycle. The EIC-ScalingUP is set to create a blueprint for the EIC deep-tech growth companies to successfully scale and accelerate their investments and partnerships. It will identify, engage, select and feature 50 EIC companies with ability to become world-scale companies, select up to 30 and guide their growth plan and ambitions and create the blueprint of the tailored ScalingUP services. The execution of the defined blueprint will support the growth and funding of the 30 companies and foster exposure and connections with target stakeholders and networks with the aim to impact the key growth fundamentals and to lead to a successful Series B/C round or acquisition value, thus validating the EIC-ScalingUP blueprint. It is expected that 500+ Euro Million will be raised by the supported companies and inspirational success stories of EIC deep-tech companies will be broadly promoted to establish the EIC-ScalingUP as a credential of honour among Investment & Innovation communities. All activities in the EIC-ScalingUP are carried out by a consortium of 4 partners with complementary expertise: Coordinator Tech Tour (Networking & matchmaking between innovative SMEs; investors, corporates and advisors), Bpifrance (the French public investment bank assists businesses across stages and sectors and finances them from the seed phase to transfer to stocks exchange listing through loans, guarantees and equity), Boston Consulting Group (a global management consulting company with a deep understanding of the Deep Tech ecosystem) and Deepwave Ventures.

The EIC Scaling Club’s mission is to grow Europe’s tech success stories. It is to be the home where 100 selected European deep-tech scale-ups, their investors and stakeholders collaborate to develop market opportunities and contribute to a better world. It will deliver 6 sets of services to its members over a period of 3.5 years: - Engage the most active investors, corporations, agencies, clusters and media and mentors - Grow the value of the 100 selected member companies with a best-in-class venture mentoring programme; - Facilitate the financing, partnering and hiring of talent through a curated roadshow of events - Share the inspirational success stories of the scale-ups - Develop relationships with the key institutions at EU and Member States - Manage the Club to a self-sustainable future The Club is led by 6 complementary partners who believe that Europe is a technology and unicorn powerhouse with a purpose. Its deep tech sale-ups are at work to bring solutions to the world’s biggest challenges.

PHACTORY is a unique pan-European consortium operating as a one-stop-shop virtual factory for photonics innovation support of European industry. PHACTORY brings together over 30 partners representing Europe’s top competence centers in photonics. Together the PHACTORY partners offer open streamlined access to the full spectrum of photonics technologies, expertise and supply chain activities from TRL2-7 including pilot lines and PIC foundries, combined with specialist partners in business, investment, intellectual property, and EU manufacturing support services to maximize the commercial impact from the project. PHACTORY’s ambitious work plan builds on the proven track record of over 20 years of successful collaboration between the consortium partners in previous similar EU projects and aims to go well beyond the current state-of-the-art in terms of its impact. PHACTORY will reach out broadly to European industry, especially SMEs, start-ups, and scaling companies, predominantly as first users and early adopters, to generate a critical mass of 125 carefully selected support cases with the highest potential for commercial impact. PHACTORY will work closely with the selected support cases, providing deep technology support interventions for TRL acceleration through intensive cross-border collaborative innovation projects, combined with tailored business supports to accelerate the investment readiness levels (IRL) of the supported companies. As a result, PHACTORY expects to achieve a quantified impact of at least 1250 new EU jobs, 937M€ in new company revenues, and 190M€ in new venture capital on aggregate within the supported companies directly related to the delivered PHACTORY innovation supports. The PHACTORY project will simultaneously strengthen the European photonics innovation ecosystem with more complete and mature value chains linked to EU manufacturing which are integrated into the PhotonHub Association for sustainability of the innovation support services.