SMEs highly benefit from successful research that results in applicable solutions. It is either by monetizing their own innovative solutions or by cooperating with a research organization and bringing the shared results onto the market or other space for exploitation. In order to help this process by employing public funding and supporting activities, it is important to be able to detect and evaluate exploitation potential in research projects that are to receive the support. The partners of this project are public organizations supporting applied research by funding and assistance. They believe that in order to positively influence the research-driving SMEs and research-implementing SMEs, it is essential to be able to evaluate projects from the perspective of exploitation (or in other words application) potential. Specifically, it is key to be able to, first of all, select the most promising project proposals for support (the proposals with the highest exploitation potential) and, second, help them to successfully finish their projects and implement their results by interim and ex-post monitoring complemented with support services. Therefore, this project’s goal is to build a peer-learning group and share each other’s best practices and experiences and apply them in practice in order to improve project partners’ proposal-evaluation and project monitoring skills in terms of exploitation potential. This improvement could lead to higher success rate of the projects and their better impact assessment (Alves Ribeiro, 2015). Finally, the project also has a goal to disseminate its results among other research and innovation supporting organisations in Europe.

GEECCO aims to establish tailor-made Gender Equality Plans (GEPs) in 4 European RPOs and to implement the gender dimension in 2 RFOs (funding schemes, programmes and review processes). All participating RPOs are located in the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) field, where gender equality is still a serious problem and whose innovations are increasingly important in the knowledge-based economies. It is thus a question of excellence, competitiveness and justice to achieve gender equity within STEM-institutions, including policy and decision making bodies. Concerning the gender dimension in research programmes RFOs are the key to substantial changes and thus a crucial part of the aspired transformation. GEECCO will pursue the following objectives in order to enhance systemic institutional change towards gender equality in the STEM-field: (i) Setting up change framework and a tailor-made GEP for each participating RPO; (ii) Implementing gender criteria in the activities of RFOs; (iii) Setting up a self-reflective learning environment in and between all RPOs und RFOs to participate from existing experiences and match them with their specific needs and circumstances. Facilitators will build up appropriate communication structures and processes within the RPOs and RFOs. They will enable the RPOs and RFOs to help themselves in the longer term dealing with internal resistances against gender equality. (iv) Evaluate GEP implementation within the participating RPOs and RFOs with a quantitative evaluation using monitoring indicators and a qualitative monitoring to enhance and fine-tune implemented actions over the course of the project. GEECCO will develop the “GEECCO Experience: Dos and Don’ts while Degenderizing the STEM Field”, a guideline for RPOs and RFOs in the STEM field how to promote gender equality in the STEM field and intends to participate in standardization processes at EU level to measure “gender balance performance” of RPOs and RFOs.

The implementation of participatory practices for the development of innovations has gained prominence over the last years. Through introducing open R&I configurations innovators can gather additional knowledge about the needs and desires of citizens, public and semi-public caretakers, NGOs, social entrepreneurs etc. and thus be able to answer those through innovative products and processes. However, the ways how this is done, how it is based on legal and regulatory frameworks and to what extent ethical issues are taken into account differ massively between various countries and contexts. Furthermore, concrete concerns regarding the protection of participating non-traditional stakeholders (e.g. citizens) and their potential exploitation emerge with these new modes of innovation. Therefore, PRO-Ethics elaborates an ethics framework with principles, guidelines, assessment criteria, good practice and proposals on regulatory environments how citizens’ engagement can be properly put in place without disregarding ethical principles of fairness, transparency, gender, privacy and sustainability. This will be done through iterative discourse and learning loops together with eight participating research funding organisations (RFOs), five expert partners and two international organisations. Furthermore, the framework will be applied, tested and validated in real life through 11 practical cases and experimental pilots implemented by the RFOs in three different action fields (i.e. project funding; strategy development and evaluation). PRO-Ethics will have an European-wide outreach, nevertheless, it will incorporate and compare local conditions and other specific and cultural characteristics of the partnering RFOs from Austria, Czech Republic, Germany, Lithuania, Norway, Romania, Spain and Brussels implementing the PRO-Ethics cases and pilots.

Throughout the EU, the fragmentation of innovation ecosystems and the lack of interconnection between public national and regional agencies appear to be one of the main obstacles to securing support for the most promising SMEs. The GO-SME project responds to the need to provide financial support to SMEs and start-ups for the development of their innovative ideas. The aim of GO-SME is to share the best practices of participating research funding organisations (RFOs) and their mutual learning in designing programmes which would support SMEs and start-ups in an initial assessment of their innovative ideas so that they can progress to more advanced stages of innovation development. To achieve this aim, a combination of the following activities will be used: 1/learning from best practices already applied in support schemes for innovative SMEs and startups, 2/motivation of agencies from widening countries to design innovation support schemes for SMEs and start-ups, 3/cooperation in the setting up of comparable support schemes and sets of selection criteria, 4/sharing of best practices in the work with (international) experts and sharing of their pools 5/learning from best practices in providing coaching and mentoring services to innovative SMEs and start-ups 6/mutual opening up pools of coaches and mentors 7/offering of special services to running projects which will be selected as the most promising by an independent international panel. The added value of the project rests in its ambition to design national and regional programmes supporting innovative SMEs which could act as a pipeline for the EIC Accelerator and be part of the “plug-in” mechanism. At the same time, it can serve as a pilot project for a possible partnership co-funded from innovation ecosystems in the Horizon Europe programme.

Despite efforts to reduce fragmentation across the European Research Area, the European scientific system is still facing challenges in achieving gender equality and gender mainstreaming in research and innovation. In this context, and in line with ERA policy goals and national contexts, the GENDER-NET Plus ERA-NET Cofund aims to strengthen transnational collaborations between research programme owners and managers, provide support to the promotion of gender equality through institutional change and instigate the integration of sex and gender analysis into research and funding programmes. To do so, project partners – a consortium of 16 committed organisations – will join forces to 1) Implement a joint co-funded call for proposals, 2) Design and implement transnational actions on the promotion of gender equality through institutional change and the integration of sex and gender analysis into research, 3) Update and enlarge the mappings and analyses carried out in GENDER-NET on the promotion of gender equality in research and innovation, 4) Carry out a joint assessment of gender differences and bias in access to research grants and define and develop appropriate conditions for promoting equal opportunities in research funding, 5) Promote and disseminate key findings. GENDER-NET will address these goals through 7 work packages and relies on a strong transnational cooperation between partner EU Member States, Associated Countries, and Third Countries, to contribute to the advancement of gender equality in the ERA.