Launched in 2018, the European Innovation Council Community Platform is being consolidated as an online business entry gate, where EIC-funded organisations, corporates, investors, procurers, coaches, and the support team can connect and leverage potential partnerships and collaborations based on profiles, interests, and business goals. The EIC Community is in a mode of constant evolution. But how is our Community growing? Discover the key trends and the hot topics below!
Since the EIC Community launch, more than 12K members joined the platform and started exploring the networking opportunities provided on this virtual stage. Initially, the content published on the website was only visible to its members, but in a short time, the Community of innovators started growing, and the external interest also increased.
In 2020, the European Innovation Council decided to open the window of the digital meeting place to a broader audience. Today the most relevant news, success stories, open calls and matchmaking events offered by the Business Acceleration Services Team are available outside the platform, and visitors can also share this content with their networks.
Between September 2018 and January 2021, more than 400 articles were published, including Open Calls for events and news around other initiatives promoted by the EIC, corporates or other business partners. The platform also gathered more than 430K page views, increasing the number of visits, especially in 2020, when the public environment was created.
Hottest trending topics going into 2021
Over the last months, we created a round-up of the fastest-growing topics in the EIC Community. To compile these lists, we analysed the reach and engagement around articles, discussions, and groups.
The first place is no surprise: the hottest topic of the EIC Community has been COVID-19. In March, when the rampant spread of COVID-19 hit Europe, the EIC created a Community group to mobilise projects and actions that could have useful solutions to the new coronavirus outbreak. In just a few days, this space brought together more than 40 key players, including leading researchers and SMEs pursuing 2019-nCoV health research and developing vaccines, therapeutics, and diagnostics, among other innovations. The EIC Community's high interest and commitment led to the rapid development of multiple events fully dedicated to COVID-19 solutions, increasing even more the traffic in our platform.
Last year, the Green Deal launch and the female-led initiatives also put a spotlight on these two topics. The groups and articles focusing on sustainable matters or women in leadership initiatives received high attention from Community members, joining this top 3.
2020 was a busy year, full of changes in the EIC Community space. COVID-19 forced us to move our events online, and our virtual stage became more important than ever. The EIC wanted to reinforce the sense of community with relevant talks between like-minded founders and with trainings providing deep learning skills, everything in a collaborative set-up. We also inaugurated new event formats, filling the agenda with EIC Community Training sessions, Talks, a Summer School, a Hackathon, and a Planet.tech initiative. With these remote work, new opportunities for networking came to light, and the digital engagement was one of the achievements of the year.
What’s coming up next?
In 2021 winds of change are blowing over the EIC Community Platform as new online tools are expected already this year. But our EIC Community is made by members to its members, and to further shape our platform and tailor-fit it to your needs, we need your inputs. We will put together some questions that will help us define new content, initiatives, and business opportunities. Stay tuned!
DISCLAIMER: This information is provided in the interest of knowledge sharing and should not be interpreted as the official view of the European Commission, or any other organisation.