Democratized innovation holds undeniable promise for European producers, but the integration with corporate innovation practices is in its infancy. While the interest is real, it is still neither easy or efficient for producers – especially SMEs to benefit from collaborative production. The iPRODUCE project takes well proven concepts and approaches (from DIY manufacturing, FabLabs, Makerspace), and aims to upscale them through innovative technology solutions and to install them in well-connected multi-stakeholder ecosystems under an umbrella concept of collaborative Manufacturing Demonstration Facilities (cMDF)”. We organize our work under a social-manufacturing platform that enables multi-stakeholder interactions and collaborations to support user-driven open-innovation and co-creation. At the heart of the iPRODUCE platform is an open digital space supported by a set of innovative tools that cover matchmaking, secure interactions, generative product design, process orchestration, agile prototyping, usability evaluations and lifecycle management. We complement these technical tools with a strong social component that aims at easing the notorious hardship of engagement with makers and aim to open up to new maker segments, while we improve on SoA tools for Lead User Innovation identification. The iPRODUCE platform will be deployed in six local ‘ecosystems’ which cover different levels of maturity with collaborative production, diverse objectives and application areas spanning from home furnishing, automotive/mobility, consumer photography, medical ecquipment and more. The platform supports knowledge and resource sharing across cMDFs and all our results will be monitored and evaluated.

The focus of Cross4Health is to move beyond the state-of-the-art practice of regional clusters to unlock the collaborative potential of the SMEs from Aerospace, Biotechnology, Energy, ICT and Medical Devices (ABEIM) sectors in generating innovative solutions, business models and work-flows that enhance patient-centered personalized care for societal challenges in health, delivered through the Medical Devices new emerging industry value chains. By providing a framework for a more structured cross-sectoral and cross-border collaboration, that manages all the complex reactions within the process, Cross4Health instantiates the mechanisms to ensure the long-term sustainability of the action. The main outcome of the Cross4Health project will be a portfolio of innovative services, processes and products conceived in an intelligent ‘plug-in’ platform for ABEIM stakeholders by high performance crossover teams. This will increase the competitiveness of the SMEs, advancing the positioning of European countries in this new emerging market. All these will be achieved by pursuing the following project objectives: • Establishing Open Innovation Spaces where all the involved parties set the priorities and the challenges. • Generating added value, leveraging expert knowledge, new partnerships and market support by providing targeted monetary (competitive grants) and non-monetary (innovation vouchers) support mechanisms. • Facilitating fast testing and business hypothesis validation via large-scale demonstrators. • Facilitating sustainability by validating complementary funding streams and alignment with RIS3 strategies. Cross4Health Vision is to work towards the osmosis of technologies, culture, teams and businesses among the selected sectors, tearing down the blocking barriers to realize significant advances in Health, growth and employment for new and/or improved products, services and processes.

The project procure2innovate aims at improving institutional support for public procurers of information and communication technologies (ICT) and other product groups implementing innovation procurement by establishing or expanding competence centres for innovation procurement in ten EU Member States.

Taking into account the objectives of Vision 2020, the WHO's 2006 initiative for the elimination of avoidable blindness. When globally people with low vision are increasing as a result of the ageing of the world’s population. Where low vision not only affects the independence but has significant psychosocial and economic impact on the individual, the family and society. Major consequences of vision impairment include a child’s ability to pursue education and an adult’s ability for high quality employment, risk of falls, difficulties with daily living and increased dependence. PRO4VIP project has the objectives of : (1) the creation of an European wide network of procurers (RITT, US, FVG, BFW, AQuAS); (2) the definition of a common innovation procurement roadmap in the short term and in the long term and (3) the definition of the public procurement of innovation procedure(s) that best meet(s) their needs (that could be either a Pre-Commercial Procurement (PCP) or a Public Procurement of Innovative Solutions (PPI) or both) and that in line with Vision 2020 would either support the early detection and the screening of functional low vision conditions or would support the provision for low vision services. This will be achieved through a staged process whose main steps are: (1) the identification of the shared procurement needs; (2) the analysis of the state of the art, the technologies available in the market and the existing patents; (3) the engagement in open dialogues with other procurers, end-users and suppliers; (4) the analysis of the different public procurement of innovation options; and (5) the definition of the selected procurement procedure(s). The consortium is an interdisciplinary team composed of procurers interested in the topic from different perspectives (Health, social & Assistive Technology), with entities having the expertise to support them in identifying their common needs, validate them with the end users, other procurers and the market.