ACceleraTing PHotonics innovAtion for SME’s: a one STop-shop-incubator

Project Information

ACTPHAST 4.0

Grant agreement ID: 779472

DOI

10.3030/779472

Project closed

EC signature date 20 October 2017

Start date 1 November 2017

End date 31 January 2023

Funded under

• INDUSTRIAL LEADERSHIP - Leadership in enabling and industrial technologies - Information and Communication Technologies (ICT)

Total cost

€ 10 239 047,50

EU contribution

€ 9 999 946,00

Coordinated by

VRIJE UNIVERSITEIT BRUSSEL
Belgium

Periodic Reporting for period 3 - ACTPHAST 4.0 (ACceleraTing PHotonics innovAtion for SME’s: a one STop-shop-incubator)

Reporting period: 2020-11-01 to 2023-01-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

Photonics is essential to the functioning of new applications which are critical to our ability to fundamentally address the enormous global societal and environmental challenges of our times. Photonics is also a key enabling technology for the transformation of production methods in European manufacturing for increased competitiveness on the global stage and the boosting of Europe’s technological sovereignty. However, many European companies, the vast majority of which are SMEs, lack the expertise and resources to innovate with photonics. In order to overcome this challenge, ACTPHAST 4.0 was established to dramatically lower the barriers to photonics innovation for European companies, especially SMEs. ACTPHAST 4.0 enabled first timers and early adopters in particular to take up and deploy photonics technologies in innovative products, helping them to successfully bridge the innovation “valley of death” and accelerate their Technology Readiness Level (TRL). ACTPHAST 4.0 focused its innovation support on the early-stage prototyping at TRL3-4. ACTPHAST 4.0 strongly subsidised the innovation support activities for highly committed companies who were themselves willing to make both an in-kind and in-cash contribution to the costs of the innovation projects carried out directly with the assigned ACTPHAST 4.0 partners who represented the top competence centres in photonics from across Europe. As part of its mission, ACTPHAST 4.0 was also committed to ensuring EU-wide coordination with other key complementary initiatives at the European and regional levels, such as linkages with the European pilot lines in photonics, the European Photonics Venture Forum (EPVF) and the Enterprise Europe Network (EEN). ACTPHAST 4.0 also set itself the goal of developing best practices with regional authorities in Europe for further scaling of the SME innovation support model through co-funding collaboration and disseminating these best practices Europe-wide to as many regions as possible.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

Over the lifetime of the project, ACTPHAST 4.0 has achieved many excellent results, in particular:
• High levels of awareness-building with European industry on the innovation power of photonics with over 500.000 estimated readership for press releases including success stories of the supported companies, over 35.000 visitors to the website, and over 14.600 persons reached through 469 targeted outreach campaigns by the ACTPHAST 4.0 partners working collaboratively with complementary EU networks in particular EEN;
• 272 high quality leads generated from companies across 29 EU member states / associate members;
• 165 one-to-one scouting engagements between top photonics experts of the ACTPHAST 4.0 partners and the companies selected as qualified leads, with the photonics experts matched specifically to the innovation needs of the companies;
• 141 full project proposals written by the appointed project leaders from the ACTPHAST 4.0 partners working in close collaboration with their assigned companies;
• 109 contracted projects for deep innovation support with companies from 21 EU member states / associate members; high quality proposals with 85% approval rating;
• 94% of the innovation projects were with SMEs;
• 69% of the innovation projects were with “non-photonics” companies from across 12 different industry domains;
• The innovation projects had an average duration of 6,5 months and TRL advancement of 2,1 levels;
• Average innovation project budget including the in-kind contributions of the companies was 70k€, of which 40k€ is paid by ACTPHAST 4.0 giving an average leverage factor of 1,8 times on the total Research & Innovation expenditure resulting from the EU investment;
• All of the 7 technology platforms and the full supply chain of innovation activities provided by ACTPHAST 4.0 were actively used across the innovation projects, demonstrating the effectiveness of ACTPHAST 4.0 as a “one-stop-shop” incubator;
• 63% of the innovation projects involved a cross-border co-creation engagement between the company and the ACTPHAST 4.0 partners involved, demonstrating the European added value;
• Very high satisfaction scores provided by the supported companies, averaging 4 out of 5, across a wide range of support criteria.
As such, ACTPHAST 4.0 achieved all of its important and ambitious KPI targets for the overall project. This is in spite of the Covid crisis which negatively impacted on the workings of the project for a period of over 40% of the overall project duration.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

ACTPHAST 4.0 performed very strongly and in most cases exceeded its KPI targets in terms of the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project, as shown by the following results:
• Based on a conservative scenario, it is expected that the ACTPHAST 4.0 innovation support will generate the following impact as a direct result of the deep innovation support and over a 5-year timeframe after completion of the innovation support projects:
o a total of 839M€ in new revenues by the supported companies;
o a total of 161M€ in new venture capital funding for the supported companies;
o a total of 950 new EU jobs in the supported companies.
• In addition, ACTPHAST 4.0 also maximised its impact on the wider deployment of cutting-edge photonics technologies by European industry through its focus on first users, given that:
o 37% of the supported companies were innovating with photonics for the first time;
o 48% of the supported companies were engaging in EU-funded innovation support for the first time;
o 64% of the supported companies were engaging with a new Research & Innovation partner;
• Furthermore, during the period 2018-2021, 122 companies were supported in connecting with potential investors through the annual EPVF, and 76 of these were successful in closing new venture capital investments. The total funding raised by EPVF participants in the framework of ACTPHAST 4.0 was 196,6M€.
• Finally, a series of meetings was held by the ACTPHAST 4.0 project coordinator with key stakeholders across Europe in order to share best practices. The collaboration led to the establishment of a single pan-EU consortium, including all of the European pilot lines in photonics plus 16 EU Regions with smart specialization in photonics, which was successfully granted H2020 funding to set up a new fully-integrated pan-European photonics Digital Innovation Hub – PhotonHub Europe – which commenced operating in January 2021. A total of 17 companies that received prototyping support through ACTPHAST 4.0 have already been transferred to PhotonHub Europe for further innovation support and TRL acceleration from advanced prototyping to upscaling and mass manufacturing in Europe and many more are expected to follow as PhotonHub ramps up its activities.

ACTPHAST4.0 KPI's