Competence Centre Network
Experiences from other EU projects indicate that building up a new network from scratch is extremely difficult due to visibility issues. Over four years, TETRAMAX has compiled a network of more than 460 entities, which can be considered satisfactory for the intended purpose. The collaboration with the HiPEAC Network and the EEN closely related to SMEs (e.g. “Successful R&I in Europe”) has been vital for project dissemination and communication, advertising open TTX calls etc. Therefore, one important recommendation to other projects is to leverage existing infrastructures as much as possible. Another key element of this task has been the maintenance of local helpdesks for SMEs and other clients in all EU regions. Around 2,000 1:1 consultations took place, showing a high demand for individual services. From various surveys, it is also clear that interactive community events organization (e.g. the local LEP-level events, international workshops like TISU) is an indispensable instrument to mobilize the tech transfer community and advertise open calls in a truly EU-wide fashion.
Open technology transfer experiment calls
As indicated by the quotations below, the major learning from the open calls programme is that SME clients require and appreciate high efficiency in the proposal and project handling. Any sign of unnecessary bureaucracy discourages potential participants, and given the limited amount of TTX funding, proposal lengths, and reporting duties must be really limited to justify the effort by the academic and SME clients. Therefore, a recommendation to other projects is to spend sufficient time in planning lean open call distribution/submission/granting procedures and avoiding common mistakes, such as way too complex evaluation committee structures.
Dissemination and communication
TETRAMAX has used all well-proven dissemination and communication channels such as WWW, newsletter, trade show booths, and social media. According to client feedback, three additional special measures were highly appreciated: The TTX Award Programme provided a platform to honour the TTX with the best KPI values per open call in front of a larger audience (such as the HiPEAC Conference). Furthermore, the professional production of a set of one-minute TTX teaser video clips (amongst others available on YouTube) for around ten clients provided additional visibility and media presence of selected TTX, whose consortia likely would not have invested this effort on their own. Moreover, especially those TTX that led to start-up companies appreciated the carefully designed investor landing page (
https://www.tetramax.eu/startups(opens in new window)) where founding teams and technologies are presented in a very concise, investor-friendly fashion. These three measures are not costly but effective, thus their adoption is strongly recommended to other projects. The position of a dedicated dissemination and communication officer has also proven to be crucial for the project as a whole.
Business models, exploitation, and sustainability
A major observation within this task is that it seems very challenging to come up with a uniform, network-wide business model, given the very heterogeneous nature of the TETRAMAX consortium. Therefore, TETRAMAX took a hierarchical approach with business planning at:
• Individual TTX level;
• Partner level, initially developed in 2020 and updated at the project end; and
• Network level, synthesizing the individual plans and offerings from the TETRAMAX competence center network.
Additional efforts have been taken to enable sustainability, in particular the “SAE-HiPEAC Inc.” (SHI) initiative for cross-project self-sustainability. The recommendation for future projects is to continue the ongoing discussions about business generation within the SAE group of projects and evolve the plans within the framework of new formats like the forthcoming Digital Europe EDIHs.
