"Many researchers and scientists work their whole life in a specific field and they are ""top-notch"" experts, with years of experience. Most Ph.D. students do 5+ years of research, development and testing while they are preparing their doctoral dissertation. All of this is something all investors would like to see from their startups - great teams with years of experience that work on a specific problem for several years, with a very innovative and high-tech solution. On the one end, we have experts who have years of experience in their field, they are working on highly innovative researches and struggle to find funding for their researches. And on the other end, we have investors and venture capital funds who want to invest in experienced teams that are working on highly innovative projects, but often struggle to find them. Unfortunately, in many EU countries, academic and startup worlds are not connected at all.In comparison with the US, universities in the EU are not contributing enough to economic, and innovation is the most important driver of economic growth. Too few PhD holders in the EU go on to work outside academia and too few startups and spin-off companies are founded by PhD holders. As a result of that, the EU is in a serious deficit of successful startups and spin-off companies that are coming from the universities. This is especially true for the national context of Croatia which lags behind from the rest of the EU at the starting of university startups and spin-off companies.""Crossing the Gap: Startup education and support for PhD students, researchers and scientists - COGSTEPS"" is the project that will connect the academic world with the startup world. Through this project, a specific support programme for startups from academia will be developed. The first step will be to develop the ""Crossing the Gap"" web platform, which will allow researchers and scientists to present their work and connect with other researchers and experienced business experts, with a goal to form a strong multidisciplinary team and found a startup. It will also have a recommendation system for better connecting results between researchers, startups and financial calls/opportunities. Subsequently, more than 20 researchers will engage in intensive startup bootcamp, to master the startup basics and to recognize the opportunity for commercializing their research. The next step will be startup incubation in three phases, for 6-8 academic research and development teams (2-4 researchers per team) that want to found a startup from their research. Each phase will be complementary to the previous one, each phase will follow a specific period of startup development (from research to MVP, from MVP to first customers and from first customers to a product) and each phase will be implemented by different partners that have most experience and knowledge about that specific phase. Teams will learn about different startup topics like idea validation, product/market fit, business model, defining target customers, pitching, fundraising and networking. At the end of the project, startups will present their work in front of numerous investors, business experts, startup community, accelerators, venture capital funds and municipal government representatives. The objectives of the COGSTEPS project are positive change in startup perception from the academic and scientific communities, starting more university startups and spin-off companies, development of an entrepreneurial mindset, transferable and transversal skills by many students, researchers, professors and scientists, forming a regional hub for innovation, research and science commercialization, and academic startups between project partners and crossing the gap between academic and startup worlds.Lessons learned from the project will provide a blueprint to other countries on how to establish an efficient model for boosting innovations and a supportive environment for startups coming from the university. ""Crossing the Gap"" web platform will be the biggest factor in sharing the results of the COGSTEPS project beyond this partnership. The platform itself will help many students, researchers, professors and scientists in founding their startup, since all educational materials created within the COGSTEPS project will be in an open educational resource (OER) format and available online, on the platform. The goal is to make the ""Crossing the Gap"" web platform a starting point for anybody from the academic or scientific communities who wants to learn about startup basics and try to commercialise their research. We think that many important stakeholders (like incubators/accelerators, investors, VC funds) and business experts will use ""Crossing the Gap"" platform regularly in a search for startups, talent, partnerships or business opportunities."

To address the low start-up survival rate and the lack of funding in “modest” and “moderate” innovation ecosystems within Europe – namely in Central and Eastern European countries - the consortium (led by EIT Health in collaboration with InnoStars, Civitta and other entities, as well as an advisory board including the EIF) will use their individual expertise to implement activities that build critical mass on both the investor and venture-building front. Given the investment challenges in early-stage ventures, the Project will seek to collaborate with local start-up support organizations to provide capacity building initiatives as well as to derisk local innovators to set the foundations for modest and moderate regions to become sustainable and competitive with more dynamic regions within the European ecosystem. The project will be structured around the impact pathway methodology (scoping, engaging and implementing). The specific objectives are: 1) to build robust and sustainable early-stage investment ecosystems and increase critical mass; 2) to increase venture investments through a) cultivating life sciences local investment and b) attracting foreign investors into the local innovation ecosystem; 3) to provide de-risking and investment readiness support for Dealflow exchange to increase syndication, and 4) to disseminate and implement project outcomes, create European foundation to address fragmentation in EU market and support cross-border investments In addition to said objectives, as well as the expected outcomes set out in the call, the Project will aim to impact wider European goals, including furthering the European Innovation Agenda, increasing investment competitiveness, start-up as wells as job creation, knowledge transfer, and widening European outreach. Furthermore, project results are expected to be applicable to other regions and non-health related industries and scope a Pan-European funding initiative for health tech ventures rich in assets.