<aside> 🕰️ INNOVATION NORWAY OFFICE HOURS Innovation Norway hold Office Hours at StartupLab on the last Tuesday of every month. Meetings can be in person in Oslo, or virtually. Please book your appointment here.
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Horizon 2020 is an EU initiative designed to stimulate economic growth and development across Europe. The program is one of the world's largest of its kind and has a total budget of over 80 billion EUR.
Horizon 2020 actively supports SMEs by providing both direct financial support, and indirect support to increase innovation capacity. The SME Instrument aims at creating a bridge between the core of the framework programme - support to research, development and innovation projects - and the creation of a favourable ecosystem for SME innovation and growth. The SME-Intstrument is a part of H2020 specifically aimed at supporting growth in SMEs across Europe. Support is offered in three phases. SMEs are recommended to apply for phase 1, but may also apply for subsequent stages depending on their current progress.
Phase 1: Business innovation grants for feasibility assessment purposes (optional phase I): EUR 50.000 (lump sum) per project (70% of total cost of the project) Applying for this phase is optional, but recommended. Duration: 6 months
Phase 2: Business innovation grants for innovation development & demonstration purposes. an amount in the indicative range of EUR 500.000 and 2.5 million (70% of total cost of the project as a general rule) Duration: 1-2 years
Phase 3: With the view of facilitating the commercial exploitation of the innovation activities resulting from phase 1 or phase 2, specific activities will be proposed. These can include support for further developing investment readiness, linking with private investors and customers through brokerage activities, assistance in applying for further EU risk finance, and a range of other innovation support activities and services offered via the Enterprise Europe Network (EEN). There will be no direct funding offered from the EU in this phase.
To be eligible, your product has to be TRL-6 (Technology Readiness Level) This means that your product have been tested in an near-realistic environment and has the majority of its components/features installed/integrated.
Excellence
To be deemed "excellent", your project needs clearly defined goals, be highly relevant for the topic and groundbreaking. Your application must explain what makes your project innovative and disruptive.
Impact
You need to show how well your project reaches the expected goals set by the call. You also have to clearly state how EU funding will help you reach the set goal. Your application should also contain a description on how your results can be exploited commercially and how it will generate jobs and revenue.
Quality and efficiency of implementation
You need to convince the evaluators that you can make it. Don't forget that, as well as describing technical competence, you also need to provide information on commercial competence. Evaluators will assess the credibility of your team and of your work plan. Make sure you clearly describe how you will organise your team and, if you intend to use external partners to bring competences that you don't have in your company, explain what they will do and what they will bring to the table. Planning is important as well: your project should fit into a realistic time frame.