Periodic Reporting for period 2 - ATTRACT2 (Breakthrough Innovation Programme for a Pan-European Detection and Imaging Eco-System – Phase-2)
Okres sprawozdawczy: 2022-08-01 do 2024-01-31
What is the problem/issue being addressed? The ATTRACT2 project undertakes the task of creating and deploying a deep tech innovation ecosystem that accelerates the translation of technologies developed in the context of basic science to market.
What is the importance for society? Deep tech necessitates a considerable time for ending up in opportunities generating new markets or business. The ATTRACT2 project creates an ecosystem capable of accelerating significantly this process. One of the key elements for that is putting in practice co-innovation. It means that consortia of industry together with basic reserach organization find from the begining of the innovation value chain, win-win situations for developing deep technologies towards the market.
What are the overall objectives? Departing from the success of phase 1, ATTRACT2 focuses on and funds the proven and most promising breakthrough technology concepts from the previous phase showing strong potential for scientific, industrial and societal applications. Additionally, this phase is also scaling up the opportunities for young entrepreneurs concerning and will also deliver a first-of-a-kind Socioeconomic Study of an innovation ecosystem in the making, realised by top experts and addressing different points of view and practices. The ATTRACT Consortium uses public funding to lower the intrinsic risk that breakthrough technology bears as it moves along technology readiness levels (TRLs) and reaches private investment and the market.
Lowering risk is achieved in two phases:
Risk absorption (ATTRACT phase 1): ~TRLs 1 to 4.
Risk reduction (ATTRACT phase 2): ~TRLs 4 to 7.
After reaching a stage around TRL 7, breakthrough technologies – thanks to public funding – will have been sufficiently de-risked to become more attractive to private funders. At this point, ATTRACT2 will be completed, and private investment will help to commercialise new products and services for society. During ATTRACT2, data will be collected and analysed for a socio-economic study. This will assess whether ATTRACT phases 1 and 2 succeeded in streamlining the element of “chance” when upscaling breakthrough technology concepts. The study will provide useful insights on whether a potential scaling of ATTRACT phases 1 and 2 to other research fields would provide significant and quantifiable value for Europe. It will also provide interesting knowledge about how breakthrough technologies can overcome the “valley of death”.
What is the importance for society? Deep tech necessitates a considerable time for ending up in opportunities generating new markets or business. The ATTRACT2 project creates an ecosystem capable of accelerating significantly this process. One of the key elements for that is putting in practice co-innovation. It means that consortia of industry together with basic reserach organization find from the begining of the innovation value chain, win-win situations for developing deep technologies towards the market.
What are the overall objectives? Departing from the success of phase 1, ATTRACT2 focuses on and funds the proven and most promising breakthrough technology concepts from the previous phase showing strong potential for scientific, industrial and societal applications. Additionally, this phase is also scaling up the opportunities for young entrepreneurs concerning and will also deliver a first-of-a-kind Socioeconomic Study of an innovation ecosystem in the making, realised by top experts and addressing different points of view and practices. The ATTRACT Consortium uses public funding to lower the intrinsic risk that breakthrough technology bears as it moves along technology readiness levels (TRLs) and reaches private investment and the market.
Lowering risk is achieved in two phases:
Risk absorption (ATTRACT phase 1): ~TRLs 1 to 4.
Risk reduction (ATTRACT phase 2): ~TRLs 4 to 7.
After reaching a stage around TRL 7, breakthrough technologies – thanks to public funding – will have been sufficiently de-risked to become more attractive to private funders. At this point, ATTRACT2 will be completed, and private investment will help to commercialise new products and services for society. During ATTRACT2, data will be collected and analysed for a socio-economic study. This will assess whether ATTRACT phases 1 and 2 succeeded in streamlining the element of “chance” when upscaling breakthrough technology concepts. The study will provide useful insights on whether a potential scaling of ATTRACT phases 1 and 2 to other research fields would provide significant and quantifiable value for Europe. It will also provide interesting knowledge about how breakthrough technologies can overcome the “valley of death”.
The ATTRACT initiative’s overall goal is to turn scientific breakthroughs in imaging, detection and computational technologies into commercialised products and services for industrial markets.
In 2018, ATTRACT launched an open call for breakthrough ideas. Now, ATTRACT2 has taken forward the most promising opportunities. In this phase, the emphasis is on turning the proof-of-concepts into clear applications in the realms of science and industry and, in parallel, generating new business and products for citizens. This phase places special emphasis on relationship-building activities – connecting projects with one another, student researchers, and potential investors – to maximise the benefits of the new technologies on society. By the end of ATTRACT2, the projects should be ready to shift from taxpayer funding to investment from venture capitalists and entrepreneurs, helping to boost Europe as a preeminent hub for deep-tech ventures.
Today, in this reporting period the ATTRACT2 project has achieved the following tangible deliverables:
1. 18 financed projects on deep tech that are on the verge of reaching TRL 7 or 8.
2. The full deployment of the ATTRACT Academy benefitting more than 700 Young European Innovators.
3. A set of 8 socio-economic studies of the ATTRACT Ecosystem studying several aspects of it.
The reader can find full information at https://attract-eu.com/.
There is a constant recording of both media impact as well as quantitatively and qualitatively results:
Media Impact: https://attract-eu.com/newsroom/news-events/ and https://attract-eu.com/newsroom/in-the-media/
Facts and Figures: https://attract-eu.com/facts-figures/
In 2018, ATTRACT launched an open call for breakthrough ideas. Now, ATTRACT2 has taken forward the most promising opportunities. In this phase, the emphasis is on turning the proof-of-concepts into clear applications in the realms of science and industry and, in parallel, generating new business and products for citizens. This phase places special emphasis on relationship-building activities – connecting projects with one another, student researchers, and potential investors – to maximise the benefits of the new technologies on society. By the end of ATTRACT2, the projects should be ready to shift from taxpayer funding to investment from venture capitalists and entrepreneurs, helping to boost Europe as a preeminent hub for deep-tech ventures.
Today, in this reporting period the ATTRACT2 project has achieved the following tangible deliverables:
1. 18 financed projects on deep tech that are on the verge of reaching TRL 7 or 8.
2. The full deployment of the ATTRACT Academy benefitting more than 700 Young European Innovators.
3. A set of 8 socio-economic studies of the ATTRACT Ecosystem studying several aspects of it.
The reader can find full information at https://attract-eu.com/.
There is a constant recording of both media impact as well as quantitatively and qualitatively results:
Media Impact: https://attract-eu.com/newsroom/news-events/ and https://attract-eu.com/newsroom/in-the-media/
Facts and Figures: https://attract-eu.com/facts-figures/
The key elements that ATTRACT2 leverages upon for creating a novel deep tech accelerating ecosystem are:
1. Phase approach to funding:
Breakthrough Technologies (coming from Fundamental Research) are very risky to invest upon for private capital. ATTRACT2 implements a dual phase approach. First, a risk-absorption stage, where ideas and concepts could reach a prototype level and technology concept validation.Second a risk-mitigation stage, where the most promising concepts are further helped raising towards a pre-market product.
2. Co-Innovation:
ATTRACT2 bridges between two communities (research and industry) that in principle have different motivations and goals for undertaking R&D&I (capital and/or resource intensive) efforts .
It also nurtures the identification and collaboratively pursuing of win-win outcomes, starting already at the conceptual stages of a technology development and enduring them until the later stages of the innovation value chain (e.g. commercialization). Therefore, departs from research-industry relationships established as simply customer-supplier ones.
3. Young Innovators Projects
ATTRACT2 is facilitating the integration of interdisciplinary MSc level students teams working side by side with professional researchers from academia and industry developing the R&D&I funded projects.
These Young Innovators’ goal is prototyping technology solutions specifically addressing the United Nations Sustainable Development
Goals,by using a Design Thinking approach inspired by the technology developed by the projects.
These 3 action lines deliver the seek impact in three different areas.
Expected scientific/technological impacts
• New technologies available to RIs and universities for the purpose of conducting basic and applied research.
• Maximisation of return on investment of public and private research facilities through alignment and coordination of equipment use.
• Increased knowledge exchange between RIs, universities and European industry: this leads to alignment and a business case of continued scientific collaboration.
Expected societal impacts
• Detection & Imaging related products and services that make a real societal difference.
• Higher visibility of the impact of taxpayer investment into research.
• More awareness and tangible contributions to UN SDG ambitions through Student Projects.
• Strengthening of regional and national public-private research collaborations, leading to reduced outflux of young research and entrepreneurial talent.
Expected economic impacts
• Increased private investor willingness to invest breakthrough technologies originating in Europe.
• Products and/or services developed and rolled-out from Europe with major global market uptake.
• Higher international competitiveness levels of European industry in the domain of Detection & Imaging.
• Increased inward researcher mobility (from outside of Europe) due to high quality research and development.
• Maintained researcher capacity inside Europe.
• Strengthening of the ERA thanks to alignment of national research strategies.
1. Phase approach to funding:
Breakthrough Technologies (coming from Fundamental Research) are very risky to invest upon for private capital. ATTRACT2 implements a dual phase approach. First, a risk-absorption stage, where ideas and concepts could reach a prototype level and technology concept validation.Second a risk-mitigation stage, where the most promising concepts are further helped raising towards a pre-market product.
2. Co-Innovation:
ATTRACT2 bridges between two communities (research and industry) that in principle have different motivations and goals for undertaking R&D&I (capital and/or resource intensive) efforts .
It also nurtures the identification and collaboratively pursuing of win-win outcomes, starting already at the conceptual stages of a technology development and enduring them until the later stages of the innovation value chain (e.g. commercialization). Therefore, departs from research-industry relationships established as simply customer-supplier ones.
3. Young Innovators Projects
ATTRACT2 is facilitating the integration of interdisciplinary MSc level students teams working side by side with professional researchers from academia and industry developing the R&D&I funded projects.
These Young Innovators’ goal is prototyping technology solutions specifically addressing the United Nations Sustainable Development
Goals,by using a Design Thinking approach inspired by the technology developed by the projects.
These 3 action lines deliver the seek impact in three different areas.
Expected scientific/technological impacts
• New technologies available to RIs and universities for the purpose of conducting basic and applied research.
• Maximisation of return on investment of public and private research facilities through alignment and coordination of equipment use.
• Increased knowledge exchange between RIs, universities and European industry: this leads to alignment and a business case of continued scientific collaboration.
Expected societal impacts
• Detection & Imaging related products and services that make a real societal difference.
• Higher visibility of the impact of taxpayer investment into research.
• More awareness and tangible contributions to UN SDG ambitions through Student Projects.
• Strengthening of regional and national public-private research collaborations, leading to reduced outflux of young research and entrepreneurial talent.
Expected economic impacts
• Increased private investor willingness to invest breakthrough technologies originating in Europe.
• Products and/or services developed and rolled-out from Europe with major global market uptake.
• Higher international competitiveness levels of European industry in the domain of Detection & Imaging.
• Increased inward researcher mobility (from outside of Europe) due to high quality research and development.
• Maintained researcher capacity inside Europe.
• Strengthening of the ERA thanks to alignment of national research strategies.