The European Innovation Council (EIC) organised an online session to hear from the ecosystem partners interested in collaborating with the EIC. Innovation ecosystem stakeholders from across Europe shared their drivers for cooperation and revealed their ideas for potential synergies with the EIC.
This was a highly interactive event, which gathered over 200 participants from all across Europe for a fruitful discussion on establishing partnerships with the EIC.
The agenda included an introduction on the EIC’s role in the European innovation ecosystem, a roundtable with selected ecosystem stakeholders and plenty of audience questions to animate the discussion. Some of the hot topics were the equity model for the partnerships with ecosystem organisations, the win-win nature of these collaborations and the upcoming Innospace Platform.
The event also addressed some questions about the ongoing call for partnerships launched by the EIC, which is running independently from the EIC Ecosystem Partnerships: Exploring Synergies session.
How the EIC acts as an “active connector” in the innovation ecosystem
Stéphane Ouaki, Head of EIC at EISMEA (European Innovation Council and SMEs Executive Agency), opened the session with a presentation on the EIC’s role in the European innovation ecosystem.
After a brief introduction to the EIC’s funding instruments, Ouaki explained that “[the EIC] is unique in the world in the sense that it combines research on emerging technologies with a fully-fledged accelerator for SMEs and early scale-ups. The EIC is also set to become the largest tech investor in Europe”.
But the EIC’s wider ambition is also to be an active connector in building ecosystem synergies and communities. It is working on this goal through the existing Business Acceleration Services (BAS), providing EIC innovators with access to training, partners and services.
“The overall philosophy for the EIC is to be an active connector, because it is not in our DNA to replace the European innovation ecosystem from Brussels, but to increase the impact of the existing one”, stressed Ouaki.
He then addressed the ecosystem stakeholders directly, highlighting that this goal relies on using “what already exists, what you provide, and making sure that we have the right connections, so that what you do best, certainly better than we could ever do it, can benefit our companies”.
This introduction also featured an intervention from Nicolas Sabatier, General Counsel & Adviser to the Director at EIC, who presented Innospace, an upcoming online platform through which innovation ecosystem actors, researchers and service providers will be able to connect without the EIC’s direct intervention. Users will be able to find each other through a dedicated AI engine and build connections according to their needs.
“Innovation also takes place out of the EIC”, pointed out Sabatier.
Hearing from the ecosystem stakeholders
The session resumed with a roundtable featuring representatives of innovation ecosystem organisations who applied for the EIC Ecosystem Partnerships and Co-Investment Support Programme's call for partners.
The panel included Oscar Sala, Director of The Collider (ES), Caroline Sai, Head of Operations from Angels Santé (FR), Neeltje Ramnath, Business Unit Manager for Green and Sustainable Innovations of Catalyze Group (NL) and Oliver Ziegler, Senior Project Manager at VDI/VDE (DE).
The speakers addressed their reasons to collaborate with the EIC and shared their insights and vision on how future partnerships would look like.
For Angels Santé, which invests in healthcare startups, a partnership with the EIC can help the business angels in their network give back to the community by accessing the EIC’s qualified companies. To Caroline Sai, the advantages to partnering up with the EIC are “visibility, access to a great dealflow and the capacity to continue to bring expertise to Europe’s healthcare startups”.
Oscar Sala foresees this collaboration as a way to bring The Collider’s activities to the next level. “We’re connecting an international community, promoting a market-research community, that entrepreneurs and investors can use”, he stated.
“Having all these stakeholders on board can (…) help them build other potential partnerships to try to help all these companies and all these great innovators to reach the market”, added Neeltje Ramnath, highlighting the connection to the wider innovation ecosystem as a motivation for Catalyze Group to collaborate with the EIC. It’s all about “flexibility”, she explained, about adopting different business models with projects at different stages.
Networking with the wider ecosystem was also one of the motivations that led VDI/VDE to collaborate with the EIC. Oliver Ziegler explains that the organisation also wants to apply its experience in scale-up support at the German level to a European stage, learn about new technologies and trends in the European startup community and explore synergies with some of the projects they are already involved in.
The session also featured interventions from several members of the audience, who had the opportunity to pose their questions throughout the event.
A post-event survey was also disseminated to collect further insights, which will help define the focus groups for an upcoming physical event.
What’s next?
The EIC Ecosystem Partnerships: Exploring Synergies online session will be followed by a physical event in Brussels, on December 6, just a day before the start of the EIC Summit.
This invitation-only, in-person session will gather around 50 innovation ecosystem stakeholders for a series of interactive Focus Groups, which will approach the topics identified through the discussion and online survey.
The online session and upcoming physical event are brought to you by the EIC Ecosystem Partnerships and Co-Investment Support programme, which is under the EIC Business Acceleration Services (BAS).
