The main objective of the proposed project is to conduct an experiment and test the effects of a “seal” (“funded by FFG”) and information about matched funding provided by a public funding organisation (FFG) on the funding decision of the audience on crowdfunding platforms. A randomised controlled trial (RCT) will be conducted within the existing funding scheme “Impact Innovation” of the Austrian Research Promotion Agency/FFG. FFG first launched a pilot scheme for a new programme called “Impact Innovation” in 2017. A second call with improvements in communication and evaluation criteria was carried out until autumn 2018. About 30% of proposals in these two pilot schemes addressed problems or solutions that were classified as “social innovation”. A recurring pattern in these proposals was lack of or failure to provide sufficient funding to cover the total cost of the project (FFG funds up to 50% of total project cost). In addition to this FFG received feedback from the community of social innovators that a significant number of ideas was not even submitted because the potential applicants could not generate or demonstrate the necessary funds to completely fund the project (100%). FFG therefore wants to test whether and how providing information on available public funding for social innovation projects will increase (or decrease) the chances to attract funding for the remaining 50% of project cost. This test will be run on a crowdfunding plattform for selected projects and – if the results are positive - increase the total amount of funding for successful social innovation projects and provide evidence for leverage effects of matched crowdfunding.

The main objective of this project is to test the effects of feedback provided by FFG experts to R&D projects of small companies and first-timers funded in the “General Programme” of the FFG. The “General Programme” (https://www.ffg.at/en/general-programme-further-information) of the Austrian Research Promotion Agency (FFG) is the biggest and longest running R&D funding scheme in Austria. The focus is on providing feedback for small companies and first timers in the FFG, which are funded in the “General Programme”. These types of companies are selected in this experiment because it was pre-assessed that in these cases feedback would be necessary. The feedback will be offered on the technical concept, the business plan and/or the written application. The effects of this feedback should be measured by the quality of the project execution, quality of future proposals and the success of the project outcomes and company. So far feedback is only provided if the application is rejected. No feedback is given in case of a positive evaluation result. Only a contract is issued and sometimes there are conditions included in the contract (e.g. for financing statements). So, although these projects are classified as worth funding (à “good projects”) until now they do not receive any information on how to improve. This is what this INNOSUP-application intends to change: Give also feedback to the “good projects” in order to further improve the quality of the projects (e.g. in terms of technical issues or economic aspects) with the expectation that this feedback enhances business performance. With this experiment FFG wants to test, if giving feedback for small enterprises and enterprises who apply the first time have positive effects on the quality of the project execution, quality of future proposals and the success of the project outcomes and company performance.

In 2017 FFG launched a pilot scheme for a new program called “Impact Innovation”, which was continued in 2018. “Impact Innovation” supports non-technical innovation projects of SMEs. For the design of the program FFG started an intensive dialog The main objective of the proposed project is to conduct a large-scale experimental pilot and test if a set of complementary and easy scalable support measures (a combination of mentoring and software tools) can increase the innovation capacity in SMEs. Therefore, a randomized controlled trial (RCT) will be conducted within the existing funding scheme “Impact Innovation” of the Austrian Research Promotion Agency/FFG, which will be adapted accordingly and considerably improved in order to test the hypotheses by the respective control groups. The funding scheme “Impact Innovation” has a strong focus on the innovation management of the funded projects; thus the internal resources and the team capacity are highly relevant to the success of the project. By providing complementary tools to structure the innovation management (regarding process and resources) within the beneficiary and providing high-quality external mentoring, FFG will test an innovative, effective and efficient combination of support measures that aim at improving the success rate of funded projects and improve their execution. Through an evidence-based RCT, FFG will pilot a new innovative support scheme to address one of the major challenges that most funded projects have: bringing new innovative products/services/business models to the market, based on the results of publicly funded research projects. FFG is going to measure the outcomes concretely by the fulfillment of project objectives and plan, the use of innovation methods and the product/service success indicators like turnover or company growth within a given timeframe.

The economical capacity of Europe is dependent on material goods production and industry. In the European Union, competitive production is central to economic growth. To meet the pressure of globalization, demographic developments in population and job markets, and challenges of increasing resource shortage as well as the demands for energy efficiency and highest environmental standards it is crucial that public authorities, industry and research work together. Industrial production is changing fundamentally. New, aggressive competitors, especially from the BRIC countries, and in the foreground China, offer production conditions at far lower cost than in Europe. In Europe competitive goods production is based on highly qualified experts and a high de-gree of mechanization. Intelligent production technologies and processes are necessary for a competitive and efficient production of material goods. Innovative, reasonable, ecologically friendly as well as qualitative products and services are possible only on the basis of innova-tive production and process technologies. R&D to improve production technologies and processes for the whole manufacturing sector are essential. Key enabling technologies are essential to broaden the industrial basis of manufacturing industry. The conference “MAde in euroPE 2030 - innovative industry for smart growth” will focus on - Presenting new industrial applications of applied research on Nanotechnology, Materi-als and Advanced Production - Feedback from the community providing policy advice - Presenting of first insights in the upcoming FP9 of the European Commission - The networking for industry and research Europe’s industrial future is dependent on specific modernizations of production processes; "Smart Production" of new, competitive and sustainable products. Research in Key enabling technologies in industry and science in cooperation with public authorities is speeding up.

Future Proof is a novel knowledge exchange and co-design platform that uses foresight and scenario planning methodologies to co-develop novel innovation services for SMEs. It will take into account the rapid and complex changes of the world in order to use suitable methods and technologies that will respond to the future needs of our SME clients. The three innovation agencies of the Future Proof consortium, have worked for almost three decades with clients providing innovation support services. Numerous clients and participants in seminars and workshops have raised the question that caught our attention: ‘How do you compete successfully in this endlessly changing world? During the last decades colossal changes have radically changed the innovation environment and the business arena. Digitalization, sharing economy, automation, the rise of China, climate change are only few of the drivers that have created new risks, opportunities and challenges for both the SMEs and the innovation agencies. Nevertheless, SMEs and innovation agencies have done little to change their traditional modus operandi, thus facing serious difficulties to address current and future challenges. Innovation agencies for the last 3 decades are basically offering the same bouquet of services while the same applies for the available innovation SME support programs. Considering the above overall objective of the Future-Proof project is threefold: (i) To utilise strategic foresight methodologies for designing new services and/or programs that will respond to the future needs of our SME clients. (ii) To exchange best-practices in designing and implementing foresight related services to SMEs that will create high-performance resilient future-proof SMEs. (iii) To broadly communicate the project outputs to the European innovation ecosystem.