Report

Teaser, summary, work performed and final results

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - MERLIN (Methodologies for Researcher Led INnovations)

Teaser

Funding in ICT projects under FP7 and H2020 will total over € 11,268 million by the end of the current work programme. Stimulated and supported by these programmes, fundamental and applied research has been an important foundation activity enabling society to broach new...

Summary

Funding in ICT projects under FP7 and H2020 will total over € 11,268 million by the end of the current work programme. Stimulated and supported by these programmes, fundamental and applied research has been an important foundation activity enabling society to broach new frontiers in technologies and capacities, improving human and economic productivity. However, many breakthrough discoveries often fail to reach the market/end-users, resulting in incomplete exploitation of potential innovations by the researchers who develop them. It is not only the direct results of the funded projects, but also the indirect and compound outputs formed from and created during the directed project that form the potential innovations and wider impact of Europe’s research activities.

Within Europe, SMEs have long been recognised as the Union’s growth engines accounting for 57% of value added and two-thirds of employment. Startups (or young SMEs) are particularly good job creators with an average of 12 jobs created by European startups and young SMEs acting as the greatest net job creators within the private sector. Thus there can be no doubt that the fostering and growth of SMEs has the greatest impact socially and economically on the well-being of the single market.

To accelerate and foster this growth of new ventures, we need to equip researchers better to work with effective models for the successful commercialisation/bringing to market of their R+D activities. This will increase productivity, improve private investment in further researchers, create more global innovations, and stimulate a greater interest from researchers to consider the results of their work as potential opportunities for commercialisation. MERLIN will support market-oriented researchers, SMEs and startups across Europe to consider the full potential of their research and to shape ideas and outputs into innovations to be ready for market validation and commercialisation. In the context of Startup-Europe initiative, the concrete objectives of MERLIN are to (i) stimulate a greater interest from researchers to view the results of their work as potential opportunities to be exploited with the correct business model; (ii) accelerate and foster the grow of new ventures by equipping researchers better to work with effective models for the successful commercialization/bringing to market of their R+D activities; and (iii) introduce the European entrepreneurship ecosystem and the financial opportunities it offers to create and help new ventures.

MERLIN offers a range of dynamic workshops and relevant training to guide researchers and businesses on the journey to commercialisation. The programme will equip participants with knowledge, skills and a network to generate market-led business models to unlock potential and accelerate this journey. These training activities include the organization of more than 40 practical thematic workshops in several European cities, as well as in 5 international conferences to reach a wider public. By the end of each year, 8 meetups with potential customers and commercial partners will be organised by the partners. And also, MERLIN will prepare and run 4 webinars on SME growth and PPP business models.

Work performed

The main activities carried out over on the first year can be summarised as follows:
• Create and review the content for all MERLIN activities (workshops, meet-ups and webinars). Prepare documentation and presentations.
• Start establishing a network of contacts, both for communicating project activities and results, as well as for recruiting participants for MERLIN workshops and webinars.
• Deliver the first round of the first three regular workshops (12 workshops were delivered in total): “Lean Startup” methodology, “Business Model Canvas”, and “Customer Discovery”.
• Deliver the conference workshop at three conferences: IoT Week in Bilbao, European Conference on Software Architecture (ECSA) in Madrid, and Seminario Anual de Automática, Electrónica Industrial e Instrumentación (SAAEI).
• Deliver two webinars: one on “SME Growth: grant opportunities” and another one entitled “The Innovation Journey”, in collaboration with Marie Curie Alumni Association.
• Define MERLIN branding and create online presence (create website structure and content, social networks, online tools to be used, etc.).
• Continuous dissemination of project activities through the partners’ personal and institutional network of contacts.

Final results

The main results obtained in the project in 2018 are the design of the workshops, specifically tailored for researchers and personnel with technical background, and the online application \'Growth Radar\' for helping entrepreneurs finding supporting programmes in Europe. The workshops, and in general all the training activities organized within MERLIN, have been designed with a strong focus on researchers needs, thinking about their weaknesses and strengths, adding technical examples, and creating an environment for them to work on teams. The application \'Growth Radar\' recommends users supporting programmes in European countries based on the current status of the user regarding the following paramenters: Idea Stage, Technology Maturity, Market Maturity, Financials, Amount of funds received, and Team size.

The three main objectives of MERLIN that we expect to reach are (1) to stimulate a greater interest in the scientific community to view their research results as potential opportunities to be exploited with the correct business model; (2) to equip researchers with modern, need-first and market-led methodologies that will help them to shape their ideas and outputs into innovations to be ready for market validation and posterior commercialization; and (3) to introduce the rich European entrepreneurship ecosystem and the opportunities it offers to create and support start-ups on their journey. Thus, we expect different kinds of impact, from slighly changing the mindset of the researchers (and their teams) regarding research result exploitation, so that they pay more attention to it and take more actions to favor it on their projects, to the creation of start-ups/spin-offs and patents from those researchers who get more involved in MERLIN and work hard to exploit their research results.

On the long term, Society will benefit from the change of mindset in the Research community, since the new Digital Economy needs to integrate innovative research results as quickly as possible, in order to create companies that contribute to augmenting job creation and GDP in Europe.

Website & more info

More info: https://merlin-ict.eu/.