GSS EU Science Funding Gateway

Proposals should address the following activities:

• Develop approaches to set up and improve the functioning of innovation brokers, which have the capacities to find individual innovative grassroots ideas at an early stage as well as practice needs or innovative opportunities. These innovative ideas should then be developed with the support of the owner of the idea and a number of relevant actors with complementary knowledge into an EIP-AGRI interactive innovation project, using methods ensuring co-ownership of the initiators and partners in the project. Seed funding as used for EIP-AGRI Operational Group projects is often a good solution to accompany this process, but also other approaches such as “innovation advice” or “innovation coaching” are an option to investigate.
• Explore how such innovation support approaches could be embedded in the national/regional AKIS, in particular through useful connections with advisors, and how they can be linked to other broader innovation support mechanisms, including research, advisors and CAP networks at Member State or regional level.
• Investigate and compare among Member States how the governance of such innovation support could be organised at the level of the managing authorities taking into account the great variety of contexts in Member States and regions.
• Cover all 27 EU Member States in the project to ensure learning from diversity. Make use in all those countries of experts who understand and are able to make an accurate interpretation of the national/regional contexts and its impact to help develop the ideal solution for that Member State.