Exploitation of results activities, essential for the impact of European projects

Since its creation, the European Commission has worked tirelessly to boost and strengthen innovation and competitiveness in Europe. To achieve this purpose, it has implemented a series of funding programmes, such as Horizon Europe, LIFE, Interreg and many others, with the aim of supporting the development of technologies, products and services that have a real impact on society. It therefore requires that all European projects implement communication, dissemination and exploitation activities, focused on the impact and valorisation of knowledge, in order to ensure that public investment generates a return in the medium to long term. In this regard, together with experts in this field from other entities, Zabala Innovation participated last month in an event with stakeholders at the headquarters of the European Commission in Brussels.

The event addressed the importance of communication activities, as a set of actions aimed at making the project known to the general public; dissemination, i.e. initiatives that focus on making the main results available to stakeholders who can use them; and exploitation, i.e. all those activities that ensure the effective use of the results once the project has concluded.

Unnecessary duplication

After the end of the H2020 framework programme, Horizon Europe’s predecessor, it was observed that these activities, despite their undeniable relevance, were often left until the end of the project, resulting in a lack of time to properly define exploitation strategies. The consequence was that, in many cases, project results were lost.

This phenomenon could, in some cases, lead to replication of the same work by other researchers, resulting in unnecessary duplication of effort and resources and minimisation of impact, with a corresponding decrease in cost-effectiveness. Thus, despite being a pioneer in the development and research of many technologies, Europe has not been able to exploit all the knowledge generated and transfer it in its entirety to society. This may have resulted in a lower return on the large investments made by the European Commission.

In order to correct this distortion, Brussels has increased the weight of exploitation of results activities. In this way, what was a virtually unknown concept a few years ago has become one of the most recurrent terms among entities participating in European programmes.

At the same time, the European Commission has launched several initiatives aimed at providing tools and training for the implementation of these activities. These include the Innovation Radar, the Horizon Result Booster, the Horizon Result Platform, the IPR Helpdesk and the recent campaign organised by the Directorate-General for Research and Innovation, in which Zabala participated as an expert, and which is focused on disseminating the latest policies and good practices in knowledge valorisation and the demonstration of the social and economic benefits derived from research results.

Within the latter initiative, the code of practice in the management of intellectual assets for the valorisation of knowledge in the European Research Area and the code of practice in standardisation have been developed.

Impact of European projects

The European Commission’s renewed focus on exploitation activities is essential to ensure that public investment in research and innovation projects translates into tangible benefits for society and the economy. Collaboration in European projects with entities such as Zabala Innovation plays a fundamental role in this process, by boosting the maximisation of the impact of research and the valorisation of knowledge generated in the European Union.

At Zabala Innovation we have extensive experience. We currently lead or participate in the exploitation activities of more than 20 projects. We mainly provide support in research projects (RIA) to universities and research centres, as they usually have more difficulties in implementing these activities, although we also participate with companies in innovation projects (IA). Our work consists of identifying the results generated and defining the intellectual property and exploitation strategies for projects submitted to the various funding programmes. This is essential in order to maximise the impact of all the knowledge that is generated on a daily basis thanks to the contribution of the European Commission.