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    What is the European Institute of Innovation and Technology?

    The European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT) was set up in 2008 at the initiative of the European Commission and is an autonomous EU body stimulating world-class innovation. It brings together excellent higher education institutions, research centres and businesses and aims to achieve its objective through a pioneering concept of cross-border public-private-partnerships known as Knowledge and Innovation Communities (KICs).

    Knowledge and Innovation Communities (KICs)

    KIC is a highly integrated, creative and excellence-driven partnership which brings together the fields of education, technology, research, business and entrepreneurship, in order to produce new innovations and new innovation models that inspire others to emulate it. They are to become key drivers of sustainable economic growth and competitiveness across Europe through world-leading innovation. The KICs will be driving effective “translation” between partners in ideas, technology, culture, and business models, and will create new business for existing industry and for new endeavours.
    KICs should fulfill the following prerequisites (the list is not meant to be exhaustive):

    • Address major economic and societal challenges Europe faces, and contribute to the delivery of the Europe 2020 Agenda
    • Align and co-ordinate with relevant EU policies as well as with existing initiatives under Horizon 2020 and Erasmus for All
    • Be able to mobilize investment and long-term commitment from the business sector;
    • have an existing market for its products or be able to create new ones;
    • Create sustainable and systemic impact, measured in terms of new educated entrepreneurial people, new technologies and new business
    • Bring together a critical mass of world-class research, education and innovation stakeholders, which would otherwise not unite
    • Require trans-disciplinary approaches and the development of new types of education across the boundaries of disciplines
    • Address major innovation gaps such as the European paradox, i.e. themes where Europe has a strong research base but a weak innovation performance

    The EIT designated its first 3 KICs in 2009:

    Who can participate in a KIC?

    KICs bring together different people working together across the innovation web. Key actors include: businesses (including SMEs); entrepreneurs; research and technology organisations; higher education institutions; investment communities (private investors and venture capital); research funders, including charities and foundations; local, regional and national governments.

    The minimum condition for setting up a KIC is the participation of three partners from three different member states. However, the running KICs include much more industrial as well as acedemic partners (see below).

    Organisation and set-up of KICs

    KICs are characterised by geographically distributed people who are brought together for significant periods to work in centres where individuals from different types of organisations and cultures (nationalities, industry, academia, research etc) are co-located in significant parts of the innovation chain (co-location centres). This co-location of people will allow stakeholders to work together face-to-face and move forward effectively towards KIC goals. The co-location centres are expected to be the lead nodes amongst a much larger number of partners in the network. It is anticipated that KICs will typically involve four to six co-location centres or lead nodes.

    A KIC is expected to have a strong management and governance, including:

    • high quality management with strong leadership and direction (for example, CEO, CFO) devoted full-time to develop strategy, ensure delivery of milestones and outputs and facilitate day-today operation of the organisation;
    • clear organisation and collaboration rules (including entry-exit rules);
    • an effective governance structure, enabling rapid decision making committing all KIC members;
    • shared short-, mid-, and long term targets, performance indicators and milestones for the activities;
    • motivating IPR rules;
    • a strong outreach programme, for example to attract new partners, to develop and support clusters of SMEs around KIC nodes and to engage public interest in technology and non-technology-driven innovation and its importance in delivering Europe’s economic and social future.

    Future development within Horizon 2020

    In the future the EIT will be part of the next framework programme (Horizon 2020). This means also that the budget will be increased substantially and that further KICs will be called.

    The following KIC topics are proposed for the next two waves of KICs:

    1. Added-value manufacturing
    2. Food4future - sustainable supply chain from resources to consumers
    3. Innovation for healthy living and active ageing
    4. Raw materials - sustainable exploration, extraction, processing, recycling and substitution
    5. Smart secure societies
    6. Urban mobility

    Topics 2, 3 and 4 have already been identified for the first wave in 2014. The remaining topics could follow in 2018. However, the proposal reserves flexibility in case of the appearance of new thematic challenges.

    Budget and Funding

    In total, only 25 % of the KICs´ budget is provided by the EIT. The remaining 75 % should come from other sources e.g. the partner´s own resources as well as national, regional and other European funds (structural funds, fundraising from Horizon 2020, etc.).

    Whilst the full 75% from non-EIT sources is not expected to be in place on day one of the KIC, the KIC-application (proposal) must include a robust plan to demonstrate commitments to ensure sustainable and long-term self-supporting financing including a substantial contribution from businesses.

    A budget of 3.1 billion Euro is foreseen for the KICs in the period 2014 - 2020. This however, can change until the official call of the next wave. (Since only 25% of the costs are funded that means that the KICs' budget of the second and third wave are expected to be substantially higher than 1 billion Euro.)

    Is it relevant for the WU?

    Setting up a KIC or even a co-location centre is a rather cumbersome task. You have to co-ordinate a lot of partners and you need a thoroughly developed business plan. Furthermore you need the backing from the political decision makers. The set up of the KICs of the first wave showed that the money spend by local and national governments has is of great influence on where co-location centres are set up and on which consortia are chosen by the big players (such as Siemens, Nokia, Bayer, etc.)

    There is some backing of the Austrian government (the BMWF promised 1 million Euro for an Austrian co-location centre) but it might be questioned whether this amount will be enough. Although some of the topics of the furture KICs are highly relevant for the WU, they do not cover WU's main research areas. Concluding, we may say it might make a lot of sense to enter a co-location centre as a partner, but at the moment there might be other funding sources that are more promising than KICs.

    For more information: http://eit.europa.eu/