Social Challenge Innovation Platform, SCHIP, aims at creating an online ecosystem to match pressing social challenges with innovative solutions, by supporting the co-development and execution by social innovators and SMEs of sustainable and market-oriented innovations with clear social impact. The action will enable European stakeholders to clearly define pressing social challenges; to promote a broad participation of social innovators, entrepreneurs and SMEs; to facilitate the testing of concrete solutions to prioritised challenges and their international scaling. SCHIP will provide a complementary grant-making mechanism, focused on the translation of challenges into practical and marketable solutions. The action will test a novel approach in the selection of solutions that is demand driven and user-centred. It will promote the ignition of these solutions by facilitating access to mentors, first clients and investors, and by building on the proven experience of the consortium networks in scaling social innovation across Europe. To maximise value for money and impact, SCHIP will leverage the know-how and reach out of the 3 partners: META Group with its long experience in managing financial instruments and meeting entrepreneurial needs; Impact Hub, the leading global network of centres for social innovation and social entrepreneurship with 85 Hubs, over 13,000 members and a proven track-record in managing social innovation challenge prizes; and EBN (The European Business and Innovation Centre Network), with its over 240 members, reaching out to more than 18,700 SMEs, 8750 start-ups and 485 large companies - 12% of them involved in social innovation related projects.

FET2RIN aims at facilitating collaborations to set the ground for the take up of FET projects by overcoming obstacles related to market outreach and accessing business leaders including entrepreneurs, early stage investors and crowdfunding communities. FET2RIN will deliver adhoc capacity building and market acceptancy actions to FET project partners to allow them to focus on novel exploitation rutes and unconventional business models to better meet the need of future societal and commercial impact. Proposed actions will stimulate researchers, entrepreneurs, business leaders working together to mutually understand opportunities disclosed by FET and cross-fertilize. Mentors and unconventional stakeholders business leaders, crowdfunding platforms will be engaged to validate market assumptions and speed up take up. Parnters will provide methodological support and capacity building actions based on the new trend of the customer validation process. To maximize impact, leverage on social recognition, seed opportunities for improving innovation potential of FET FET2RIN will reach out with ad hoc actions its target groups (FET Projects, entrepreneurs, business leaders, bakers) and offer opportunities for the mutual engagement of these communities when looking for market validation and acceptancy for FET results. Business leaders entrepreneurs will act as mentors for FET projects during capacity building customers and end users will be actively contacted leaving the labs. Such interaction among different communities and typology of stakeholders (for profit and not for profit, conventional and unconventional, etc.) will promotes cross-fertilization, mutual understanding and open up opportunities for further cooperation and take up.

The project’s main objective is to increase the visibility and impact of EIC portfolios of projects through the co-creation of diverse online and physical activities, materials and tools that will be implemented in three thematic Communities of Practice - CoP (green, digital/industry/space and health). Those formats will prompt the creation of multidisciplinary communities around selected portfolios, and will stimulate interactions and synergies among projects inside and across thematic and EIC challenge-driven portfolios, while providing the EIC Programme Managers ( EIC PMs) with sustainable measures and community model structures to build networks around portfolios and develop new visions for future technologies and innovation breakthroughs. EIC Communities will work closely with the EIC representatives and EIC PMs through, inter alia, co-creation of new engagement practices and co-developing policy recommendations for R&I in future deep-tech. Community and synergy building activities will be co-developed with CoP stakeholders and implemented inside and across the three CoPs to ensure cross-sectoral and multidisciplinary interactions between EIC open and challenge-driven portfolios and projects. Those activities will include: (i) pitching sessions, (ii) matchmaking between projects, (iii) organisation of Portfolio Days and online interactive academies, (iv) thematic workshops and (v) re-launch of the Future Tech Week. As a result, a wider community, which goes beyond the selected portfolios, will be established in each CoP. The outcomes of the activities carried out in CoPs will be translated in a set of high-impact communication materials that will aim at showcasing the added value of the portfolio ecosystem and benefits stemming from portfolio interactions. Sustainability and replication plans will be produced with a view to ensure effective pathways for exploitation of project results and to stimulate synergies with other portfolios, not covered by the project.

Communicate and Bridge BioEconomy Research to Business The overall objective of the CommBeBiz project is to contribute to the improvement of sustainable living conditions through the most effective and responsible use of our biological resources. This will be achieved through designing, delivering, assessing & evaluating a Pilot scheme (BeBizPilotPlan), that provides tailored and targeted support and co-ordination activities across all Member States. The Pilot will bring KBBE funded research projects in FP7 and Horizon2020 programmes together with bioeconomy research, knowledge transfer, social innovation, policy development and communication experts, SMEs and entrepreneurs to drive innovation and exploitation faster for the environmental good and commercial benefit. The full results of the BeBizPilotPlan will be published in the BeBizBlueprint. The project will use a tailormade approach to the segments of the bioeconomy : agriculture, fisheries, food, forestry and biotechnology. CommBeBiz will work collaboratively on the FP7 database with 'Allied Projects' BioLinx and ProBio utilising the Heads of Agreement document agreed between us (July 2015).