Valorising Horizon project results via innovation ecosystems

Expected Outcome:

Project results are expected to contribute to all of the following expected outcomes:

• owners of Horizon project results that are better prepared to bring their products, practices and solutions to the market, with clearer value propositions, validated user cases, and credible commercialisation pathways;
• strengthened links between research outcomes, Horizon Europe instruments and public/private knowledge intermediaries foster a more cohesive and responsive innovation journey;
• enhanced collaboration between research, education and innovation stakeholders (knowledge triangle) ensures more effective exploitation of impactful research results and stronger alignment with societal and industrial needs.

Scope:

A structural gap persists between research outcomes of Horizon 2020 Pillar III^[1], Horizon Europe Pillar II (Horizon) and the initiatives supporting knowledge valorisation. While many Horizon projects end with experimental proof of concepts and laboratory validation, most market- and business-oriented support mechanisms (e.g. acceleration, investment or pre-commercial procurement) typically engage only at later stage, such as through validation in relevant environments, prototyping or demonstration. As a result, critical elements for innovation de-risking (e.g. identifying concrete use cases, validating results in real-world environments, defining customer segments, developing viable business models or intellectual property strategies) are often underdeveloped when Horizon funding ends. This disconnect disrupts the innovation pipeline, limiting the capacity of promising innovations to progress toward follow-on financing and market deployment.

Thus, there is a need to facilitate a continuous innovation journey, from unexploited research outputs to deployment, leveraging existing structures and activities supporting innovation development, such as Knowledge and Innovation Centres (KICs), Regional Innovation Valleys, European Startup and Scaleup Hubs already supported through current Horizon Europe Pilar III instruments or other relevant national, regional and transnational innovation hubs and centres. A successful continuous innovation journey requires knowledge valorisation support to advance Horizon’s collaborative research results with high innovation potential (whether technological, non-technological or SSH-based) into validated, high-impact innovations (both because of their financial and societal benefit potential). This innovation journey should be paved through European, national and regional innovation ecosystems, guiding those innovations towards the right programmes and attracting public and private investors.

Projects should cover the following activities:

• scout and map promising innovations, startups, SMEs and exploitable results emerging from Horizon 2020 and Horizon Europe (Horizon) - whether recently concluded or ongoing - and systematically integrate them into the innovation pipeline, with particular attention to Pillar II projects and outputs with credible innovation potential;
• launch competitive calls targeting single Horizon projects and/or owners of Horizon results within their thematic area, to support validation and valorisation of their results. Economic support is to be used solely for prototyping, testing, demonstrating, piloting, product validation and market replication of exploitable results in (near to) operational environment;
• provide guidance and facilitate access for selected candidates - identified through scouting, mapping and competitive calls - to ‘real-life’ validation sites, including but not limited to demonstration sites, living labs, testing facilities or industrial partners;
• provide expert mentorship and continuous, tailored support to selected candidates throughout the valorisation and validation of their results, with a focus on key activities such as development of value propositions, business model development, customer or user validation, preliminary market consultations, IP strategies and exploitation strategies. This support should prepare participants to successfully engage with public and private programmes, accelerators and investment opportunities. To avoid duplicating existing initiatives, selected candidates should be actively guided towards leveraging existing innovation, education and entrepreneurial platforms and programmes – such as those provided by Erasmus+, European University Alliances^[2] or the KICs – wherever advantageous;
• deliver targeted training on scalability, encompassing market and investment readiness strategies, pre-commercial procurement pathways and deployment instruments. Additionally, provide support for building or strengthening entrepreneurial teams around promising Horizon results (e.g. matching researchers with experienced entrepreneurs or intrapreneurs from the innovation ecosystem);
• facilitate selected candidates in accessing and navigating potential follow‑on EU funding instruments (EIC^[3], EIE^[4], Regional Innovation Valleys, European Startup and Scaleup Hubs, successors to existing programs like InvestEU, and InnovSMEs, national/regional innovation funds) ensuring smoother transitions through the innovation pipeline.

Proposals must address one of the following thematic areas: A) Agriculture and Food systems, B) Clean transition: energy & transport, C) Health, D) Bioeconomy, and E) Raw materials & advanced materials. Proposals must clearly indicate the area they are applying to.

Consortia should comprise those actors that in innovation ecosystem act as knowledge intermediaries - such as technology transfer offices, EU supported innovation ecosystems, existing innovation platforms, incubators, clusters and entrepreneurship support initiatives - which will be best placed to link Horizon project consortia and owners of exploitable Horizon results with accelerators, investors, municipalities, regions, clusters, innovative public and private procurers, living labs and mission-oriented innovation platforms.

Proposals must provide financial support to third parties (FSTP) to launch competitive calls for validation and valorisation of Horizon Results. As the primary purpose of the action is to de-risk innovations through validation and valorisation, a minimum of 60% of the total requested EU contribution should be allocated - within each thematic area- for this purpose. FSTP funding should be provided only to support research results from projects funded under Horizon 2020 Pillar III^[1] and Horizon Europe Pillar II, and/or owner of research results stemming from those projects. Beneficiaries should define the process for the selection of innovative results through open calls. They will also define the process that will lead to a selection of a pool of evaluators that will evaluate the applications received in the open calls.

Proposals should demonstrate a gender-sensitive approach that explicitly considers and addresses the structural, cultural and institutional barriers faced by women innovators and entrepreneurs across the innovation ecosystem.

Proposals should benefit from synergies and avoid overlaps with relevant ongoing projects, e.g. funded under topic HORIZON-BRIDGING-2027-01-03, HORIZON-BRIDGING-2027-01-05 and HORIZON-CL4-2026-01-MAT-PROD-48.

[1] Societal Challenges Programme

[2] European universities alliances, funded by Erasmus+, have the scope and scale, together with their innovation and business partners, to contribute to stronger knowledge valorisation, through dedicated education and training offers. European Universities alliances and their partners - European Education Area

[3] European Innovation Council

[4] European Innovation Ecosystem

[5] Societal Challenges Programme