The I4MS Going to Market Alliance (I4MS-Go) will bring the I4MS innovation ecosystem to the market by creating the largest on-line community of stakeholders, users and service providers, for the digital transformation of manufacturing SMEs and Mid-Caps to a profiled audience of 2 million impacts. This will be achieved by the clustering of 11+ I4MS Innovation Actions; the mobilization of 7 M€ of additional public (ESIF) and private Funding though I4MS-Regions, the I4MS Disruptors Awards and I4MS-Accelerate and the implementation of the I4MS-Skills Observatory under the framework of the Digital Skills and Jobs Coalition; MADE, recognized by the EC as a best practice example of support to advanced manufacturing at EU level, and active member of EFFRA, will lead the clustering of all I4MS Innovation Actions and the Top-100 European Digital Innovation Hubs, whilst FIWARE FOUNDATION, will lead the liaison with all DSM initiatives. MWC, organizer of the world´s largest event for Digital Industries, and promoter of the Going Digital Initiative, will position I4MS and the Skills Observatory globally as the biggest and most influential ecosystem for Digitisation of manufacturing SMEs. FBOX, coordinator of the FIWARE Accelerator IMPACT Growth and partner of 4 piloting DIH supported by I4MS, will manage the on-line community for newcomers and existing stakeholders of the I4MS ecosystem. The Galician Innovation Agency (GAIN), coordinator of the MONITORIS3 project, the INCOMERA ERA-NET Cofund project and a RIS3 best practice itself, will create the proper liaison with the Smart Specialization Platform and the ERA-LEARN 2020 CSA to leverage further investments following multi-regional collaboration models. I4MS-Go will demonstrate how an EC funded CSA can broader an ecosystem for European manufacturing that helps turn the EU into the “EU of entrepreneurial states and digital industries".

IMPACT GROWTH will fund 4 European Superstar Startups (unicorn potential) confirmed by top VC investors and global corporates of 4 smart verticals: cities, digital content, agrifood and factories 48 companies exploiting Future Internet research results will be discovered out of a deal flow of 5.000 startups through 4 OpenCalls. They will join an acceleration programme and will start a crowdfunding track. A “live due diligence” from the acceleration and the market response through the crowd will select the best companies. 4 out of the 48 startups will succeed in reaching the 1.5 million euros crowd funded investment led by the VCs and platforms in the consortium leveraging the 6 million euros of public funding with 6 additional million euros of private investment. The IMPACT GROWTH consortium includes: Mobile World Congress as the reference digital mobile event in the planet; 4 corporates including Danone, Ferrovial, NTT DOCOMO BuonGiorno and MADE (integrates LEGO and Vestas among others); FIWARE Foundation to guarantee the proper exploitation of research results aligning them with other FIWARE initiatives; Accelerace and Kibo Ventures as top VCs; ISDI as leading FIWARE accelerator; FundingBox as leading European startups funding platform; INVESDOR as first global crowdfunded platform with MiFID license and ISDI Mexico that will reinforce EC objectives of globalizing the Future Internet efforts via Mexico and as a pilot on how to engage with Plug & Play and Tel Aviv Go Global joining the project via LoI; PARP, the agency for startups in Poland, will support the consortium via LoI to pilot the adoption of best practices for ESIF purposes under Smart Specialization Strategies for regions. IMPACT GROWTH will help demonstrate that public funded research results with a “continuity” approach (continued support from seed to initial series round) can help top startups become European Superstars and can turn the EU into the EU of "entrepreneurial states".

RobotUnion will discover, support and fund 20 European Superstar Scaleups confirmed by top VC investors and global corporates of 4 new market domains for robotics: manufacturing, agriculture, healthcare, and civil infrastructure. 40 companies developing research will be selected out of a pan-European deal flow of 300 Scaleups through 2 Open Calls. The top 20 will join an acceleration program that will help them progress from TRL4 to TRL7 onwards. This 2 up to 16-months program will provide them with technical and non-technical support services: • Ph-D in residence type of service (the so-called Technical Mentors and Researchers-in-Residence will provide access to knowledge in abilities such as configurability, adaptability, motion, manipulation, decisional autonomy, dependability, interaction, perception, and cognitive ability) • Entrepreneur-in-residence type of support (provided by a pool of world-class training and high-level business mentoring complemented by fundraising mentors) • A voucher scheme to provide access to facilities and technical services across Europe • Up to €200K of free-equity funding for the best-in-class companies. 8 best-in-class companies will start a fundraising campaign led by the VCs and platforms in the consortium leveraging the €8M of public funding with additional €8M of private investment. To this end RobotUnion counts on 5 premier-class RTOs specialized in Robotics at European Level to provide technical support; 4 corporates enabling access to new markets: MADE in Manufacturing, ARLA food in Agri-food, FENIN in Healthcare and FERROVIAL in Infrastructure; CHRYSALIX and ODENSE S&V, as VCs of references in robotics, to lead the fundraising campaigns. Business support partners are FMWC (dissemination), FBA (open call management), ISDI (business acceleration) and BLM (fundraising and access to corporates). RobotUnion will help demonstrate how Europe can lead disruption around Robotics and turn the EU into the EU of entrepreneurial states

C-VoUCHER aims to develop new circular (cradle to cradle) value chains, disrupting traditional linear (cradle to waste) business models by means of cross-fertilization with Design Thinking experts and Circular Disruptors. This approach is empowered by 6 Regional entities (2 leading ones from SE and DK and 4 learning ones from ES, FR, PL and RO), which together with their 41 clusters representing 5,763 SMEs (linked as 3rd Parties, including 11 gold, 4 silver and 7 bronze label ones) will work, at cross-border level, on embedding circular economy (CE) model in their Smart Specialization Strategies. C-VoUCHER is the proof-of-concept framework where 24 selected Classic SMEs from traditional industries (Agro-Food, Health, Sea, Textile, and Manufacturing), will be offered an innovative 4-phase Circularity Program to develop 12 Circularity Solutions, to be then introduced in 42 Adopter SMEs with similar challenges. The regional CE Champions will be showcased to create ‘school’ at Regional Level and beyond. The project will leverage €6M of complementary funding for CE Champions and Adopters (provided by private and public investors). Also, a ‘Circular Design Toolkit for Regions’ will be produced to mainstream the methodology in the other EU Regions. The project will be coordinated by FBA, the European leader in Financial Support to Third Parties and supported by BLUMORPHO (Business and LEAN Innovation Accelerator) and Fundingbox Communities (expert in online marketing and community building). Industry actors: MADE (representing manufacturing companies), ARLA (biggest Scandinavian dairy producer), Green Ship of the Future (private partnership working for cleaner maritime industry), Neuca (Polish entity from Health sector), Lifestyle & Design Cluster (specializing in Textiles), will help to define the industry challenges. C-VoUCHER will demonstrate how Europe can disrupt traditional value chains and become the Europe of entrepreneurial regions.

The I4MS program in H2020 has been and is a great success for the Digital Transformation of European Manufacturing SMEs. Phase IV of the program was focussing on DIHs and on highly innovative technologies like Digital Twins and AI. In particular, the AI REGIO Innovation Action developed a virtuous alliance between Regions, DIHs, AI solution providers and Manufacturing SMEs, which is materialised by a new methodology for DIHs service portfolio and customer journey analysis, an AI4EU -oriented toolkit of Data and AI resources, a network of Didactic Factories and their TEchnology and REgulatory SAndboxes (TERESA) and an ecosystem of SME-driven experiments and their Digital Transformation pathways. It is time now to align such important outcomes to the evolution of Manufacturing towards Industry 5.0, the evolution of cloud AI Technologies to AI-at-the-Edge, the evolution of H2020 to Horizon and Digital Europe programmes e.g. to EDIH, Data Spaces and AI TEFs (Testing and Experimentation Facilities) for Manufacturing. Some of the AI REGIO I4MS Phase IV motivations are now evolved: it is time for AI REDGIO 5.0 for keeping momentum of AI technologies adoption in Manufacturing SMEs. AI REDGIO 5.0 aims at renovating and extending the H2020 I4MS AI REGIO alliance between Vanguard EU regions and DIHs for a competitive AI-at-the-Edge Digital Transformation of Industry 5.0 Manufacturing SMEs. AI REGIO outcomes (methods and tools for DIHs governance and cross-DIH collaboration; Data Space and AI for Manufacturing toolkit; Didactic Factories network and TERESA facilities; SME-driven experimentations in 14 Vanguard regions) will be i) extended to the I5.0 principles; ii) enabled by the newest trusted technologies along the edge-to-cloud continuum; iii) supported by European open source hw/sw reference implementations, preserving EU values and ethical principles; iv) interconnected with the EDIH network in DEP as well as with the AI TEF nodes and the Data Spaces deployment program.