Insights

The European Association of Innovation Consultants published its first collective report to help European Commission in their work to inform the industries on the deployment of Next Generation EU funding instrument, the largest economic stimulus ever funded by the EU. As one of the founding members of EAIC, Spinverse has also contributed to this report, called "A Guide to Next Generation EU for industry to better understand and seize its opportunities".

Patria Land is leading a defence industry consortium that has now been selected as part of the European Defence Industrial Development Programme (EDIDP), an industrial programme of the EU. As part of the EDIDP, the program focuses on Ground Combat Capabilities (GCC) to develop the next generation armoured platforms and upgrade the current ones. Patria Land acts as the industrial coordinator of the EDIDP-GCC-2020 and has formed a consortium called FAMOUS (European Future Highly Mobile Augmented Armoured Systems) to execute the program. The consortium includes 19 leading European defence companies from different countries. Spinverse supported the planning and preparation of the winning FAMOUS project proposal and will help Patria Land to coordinate the project.

A new project with 30 participants from eight European countries will pave the way for an emerging new European business and technology ecosystem aimed at tackling various energy-related challenges for the future of mobility. The project accelerates Europe's decarbonization goals for 2050. The project consortium and proposal were built with the help of Spinverse.

Horizon Europe, the landmark research programme for the years 2021-2027, has finally launched with the official opening of its first collaborative calls. The budget of 95.5 B€ for the next seven years will offer strong support for projects related to topics such as health, digitalisation and green transition. Innovative small and mid-sized enterprises will also be able to benefit from the various funding opportunities under the programme.

Urbaser, a global environmental management company, and their subsidiary Socamex, will lead a pan-European CIRCULAR BIOCARBON project, launched in summer 2021. The project aims to build the first biorefinery for municipal solid waste and sewage sludge in Europe. Spinverse supported Urbaser at the project proposal phase. As a result of a successful grant application, the circular biocarbon project will be partially funded by 15 M€ from Bio-based Industries (BBI) Joint Undertaking subsidy provided by the European Commission.

During 2020, Göteborg & Co and Gothenburg won the title European Capital of Smart Tourism. IMCG helped implement the programme during the year and to launch many new local, national and European collaborations – where all of them have a clear link to sustainability and digitalisation. This was to further strengthen Gothenburg's position as a smart destination – open for smart tourism.   

The collaboration within the LuxTurrim5G ecosystem, driven by Nokia and coordinated by Spinverse, has progressed nicely despite the challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic. The extensive company consortium developing a digital platform for the smart city has now reached an important milestone when its key element, the 5G smart pole, has progressed from the development stage into the pre-commercial product. It is in fact a product family of smart poles, which can meet the various needs of cities. The modular structure allows for poles in different sizes, integration of various devices, and implementation of required digital services based on usage and surrounding area. The ecosystem partners are currently working on finalising the collaboration model to bring the product to markets.   

Spinverse health tech and funding experts have been supporting Helsinki University Hospital (HUS), the largest academic medical centre in Europe, in some of their publicly funded research projects and activities related to EU funding applications. We discussed with Suzan Ikävalko, Senior Research and Innovation Manager at HUS, on the importance of EU funding as means to boost innovative research projects and collaboration with other parties.

We know the warmest time of the year is not far away when our summer trainees join Spinverse to support our experts over the summer holiday season. This year, we are proud to introduce Maria Heinonen, Heidi Melkko and Joonas Paukkunen as our summer trainees. They were selected in our virtual recruitment event from more than 150 candidates.

Phenolic resins are one of the most versatile polymers yet invented. Spinverse recently supported the VIOBOND consortium to secure funding of 16 M€ from the Bio-based Industries Joint Undertaking (BBI JU) grant. VIOBOND project with a total budget of 35 M€ is led by Latvijas Finieris, and it aims to help build a sustainable and safe flagship plant for large-scale production of lignin phenol-formaldehyde (LPF). In this project, lignin will be used to partially substitute hazardous chemicals of fossil origin.