Innovation Policy Archives - META Group

Better monitoring for Shalegas sites

a.bassetti — Tue, 23 Jan 2024 01:32:18 +0000

Shale Gas Operators monitor their sites by manually extracting samples and analysing them in a laboratory every few weeks. Pollution can therefore go undetected for several weeks.

The ShaleSafe sensor system will monitor key parameters several time a day, alerting the Operator whenever any pollution is detected to provide greater security for citizens, companies and regulators.

How ShaleSafe Helps

The ShaleSafe sensor system, lowered into monitoring wells, will monitor key parameters several time a day, alerting the Shale Gas Operator whenever any pollution is detected and providing greater security for:

Citizens: ShaleSafe-equipped Operators can provide local councils with reassurance that any pollution will be detected as soon as it occurs, not weeks later
Operators: lower pollution risks, and operations futureproofed against regulatory change
Regulators and Policymakers: ensuring pollution is detected immediately, protecting both the environment and the emergence of this new energy industry.

Join our pilot phase

ShaleSafe is being commercialised by the SHALESAFE research project. Shalegas operators, environmental monitoring specialists and regulators are welcome to join our pilot testing phase, planned for late 2017, so get in touch to discuss how ShaleSafe can help you.

Download: Shalesafe Brochure

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Research Exploitation

Elevating energy efficiency standards

iEPB is a EU-funded project at the forefront of energy performance innovation. The mission is to elevate energy efficiency standards across the EU, through optimisation...

Innovation Policy/Research Exploitation

Better monitoring for Shalegas sites

Shale Gas Operators monitor their sites by manually extracting samples and analysing them in a laboratory every few weeks. Pollution can therefore go undetected for...

Capacity Building/Technical Assistance

Enriching European History with Big Data

Time Machine aims to link Europe’s rich past with up-to-date digital technologies and infrastructures. This will create a collective digital information system that maps Europe’s...

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Solving Cities Challenges Through Entrepreneurship

a.bassetti — Fri, 05 May 2023 10:20:37 +0000

The META Innovation Platform helps cities and regions to boost innovation through the implementation of challenge-based programmes.

The META Innovation Platform combines everything we’ve learnt about fostering knowledge-intensive startups at the urban level.

The story of European innovation is increasingly a story of urban ecosystems – cities constantly refining and developing their innovation fabric to both foster home-grown startups and attract others from across the continent.

In parallel, large companies are increasingly supporting startups, which provide them with new solutions and business opportunities.

META’s Innovation Platform brings them together, along with other city-level stakeholders, in a carefully designed process to:

Solve local urban problems
Stimulate local high-growth, knowledge-intensive companies
Connect them to new markets and investors across Europe

We developed the Innovation Platform by adapting the originally US challenge-based innovation process to a European setting, notably via the TWIST and SocialChallenges.eu research projects.

We have since developed it considerably to make it more flexible, and to reflect the lessons we learnt.

Challenge-driven innovation

The Innovation Platform is designed around challenge-driven innovation.

Challenge-based innovation ensures startups are fostered for needs which exist locally. It follows a four-stage process:

Ecosystem profiling: the city and other stakeholders identify the city’s Unique Service Proposition and map its Local Champions
Challenge definition: the city identifies and priorities the key challenges (a demand-driven task requiring specific, working, sustainable solutions) it wants to tackle, in the process engaging the local ecosystem and local champions
Launch Challenges: roadshows and other communication activities, supported by a dedicated online platform, mobilise stakeholders around the Challenges, each led by a Challenge Owner
Implement Challenges: a tailored series of workshops, pitching sessions and mentoring activities, underpinned by online training and support, help local entrepreneurs launch startups to meet the city’s Challenges.

The result: startups with innovative products and services, each precisely designed to meet the needs of a Challenge Owner, who becomes their first client. But they get a lot more than that.

European growth

Each city’s Innovation Platform then benefits from META’s Europe-wide network of cities, startups and investors.

Most cities, after all, face similar problems. Apart from helping local entrepreneurs solve their city’s challenges, each Innovation Platform also brings the resulting startups to new investors and new markets – other cities with similar problems – across Europe.

Each city’s Innovation Platform therefore does not just solve each city’s specific problems – it turns the city into a challenge-driven Innovation ecosystem, nurturing its entrepreneurs and launching them across Europe.

In the process, the city becomes more attractive for startups from across the continent, and more competitive at creating growth.

Each Innovation Platform is tailored to each city’s specific challenges and assets, so get in touch to learn more.

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Access to Risk Capital

Accelerating Internationalisation of High Growth Startups

The ACE Programme provided innovative startups and high growth ICT companies with direct assistance in finding partners, clients and financing to accelerate their move into...

Access to Risk Capital/Innovation Policy

Solving Cities Challenges Through Entrepreneurship

The META Innovation Platform helps cities and regions to boost innovation through the implementation of challenge-based programmes.

Access to Risk Capital/Training & Coaching

Build the Perfect Pitch

The Pitch Clinic workshop is designed for early-stage startups looking for risk-capital investors. It covers key aspects such as funding sources, approaching investors, and creating...

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Exploring the Role of Innovation for Sustainability

a.bassetti — Thu, 04 May 2023 14:29:06 +0000

Common Framework for Assessment and Management of Sustainable Innovation (CASI 2020) explored sustainable innovation as a social phenomenon.

CASI was a cross-sectorial project focused on the role of innovation in sustainability, and on enhancing the understanding of sustainability within the innovation context.

It involved organsations from 12 European countries, and collaborated with national experts from another 16. All are innovation and sustainability stakeholders: from researchers and academia through to citizens, focused on developing and solving innovation-related challenges across Europe. In this way, CASI integrated the perspectives of civil society, SMEs, industry, policy stakeholders, and leading academics, engaging them in focused debates on sustainable innovation.

Via a rich and intensive set of activities carried out across the EU underpinned by a carefully designed methodology, CASI identified and described sustainable innovation cases through a collaborative analytical process known as mapping.

Key points

Shared cross-functional understanding of sustainable innovation, integrating the perspectives of multiple innovation and sustainability stakeholders (policy formulation, academia, civil society and practitioners);
Common Framework for the Assessment and Management of Sustainable Innovation, reflecting expertise from various disciplines, the results of academic research, and lessons from practitioners’ experience;
A database of case studies on sustainable innovation across the EU;
Policy briefs: short policy-oriented briefs focusing on sustainable innovation.

Results: case studies, policy briefs, news, events, blog posts and more.

Over 160 innovative practices

META Group prepared policy briefs on sustainable innovation and organizes citizen panels in Italy, where citizens were invited to present their vision about the future of sustainable innovation. The collected feedback helped develop new EU policies on sustainable innovation, with the hands-on involvement of European citizens.

More than 160 innovative practices from around the EU provided a rich qualitative perspective. They served as the basis for focused analysis, and comparison, leading to a common framework for sustainable innovation in Europe.

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Innovation Policy

Smart Specialisation Strategy (S3) for the Italian Region of Trento

Technical Assistance for the implementation of the Entrepreneurial Discovery Process (EDP) of the Smart Specialisation Strategy (S3) adopted by Autonomous Province of Trento. The Smart...

Access to Risk Capital/Innovation Policy

Solving Cities Challenges Through Entrepreneurship

The META Innovation Platform helps cities and regions to boost innovation through the implementation of challenge-based programmes.

Capacity Building

Supporting regions and industrial stakeholders in international investment projects

The Regional Co-operation Networks for Industrial Modernisation Initiative (ReConfirm), is an EU funded action to assist European regions and industrial stakeholders in implementing international investment...

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Improving New Member States Participation in EU R&I Programmes

a.bassetti — Thu, 04 May 2023 14:04:42 +0000

MIRRIS – Mobilising Institutional Reforms in Research and Innovation Systems – guided institutional reforms to improve participation in the EU’s R&D&I programmes by the “EU13” (Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia).

MIRRIS supported national administrations by identifying barriers, proposing solutions and preparing action plans to improve their participation in Horizon 2020, the eighth phase of the Framework Programmes for Research and Technological Development.

Key Points

Encouraging better participation in EU-funded R&D&I programmes by EU13 countries
Extensive analysis, policy dialogue and mutual learning among stakeholders from research, innovation and institutional organizations
Identifying barriers, proposing solutions and preparing an action plan for each country

Methodology and Deliverables

META Group set up and managed the entire process of analysis, policy dialogue and mutual learning, involving a vast range of stakeholders from three levels: decision makers, implementation institutions and operational structures from the 13 target countries.

Some of the main results of this action include:

13 “Country Profiles”, each providing qualitative and quantitative data on the particular country participation to EU funded programs for R&D&I, benchmarking the country performance against EU28 and EU15; preparing a snapshot on its current R&I policies;
13 “First Policy Dialogue Discussion” – Reports describing outcomes from multi-stakeholders’ discussion held in each country;
13 “GAP Analysis” – Reports summarising strengths and weaknesses of national R&D&I systems with a specific focus on participation to the ERA;
A “Scoping Paper” on Participation of EU12 Countries + Croatia to the ERA, presenting both quantitative and qualitative data;
A “Policy Brief” on learnings from the first round of policy dialogues;
25 “Policy Dialogues” involving so far around 400 stakeholders;
workshop on “European Research Funding in the post-2004 Member states” attended by participants from over 20 countries

To learn more about MIRRIS, drop us a line.

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Access to Risk Capital/Innovation Policy

Solving Cities Challenges Through Entrepreneurship

The META Innovation Platform helps cities and regions to boost innovation through the implementation of challenge-based programmes.

Capacity Building

Platform to Help Startups Solve Social and Environmental Problems

SocialChallenges.eu is the latest iteration of META’s Innovation Platform, which uses challenge-based innovation to foster startups and SMEs capable of meeting Challenges, posed by organisations as diverse...

Access to Risk Capital/Capacity Building

Capacity Building for Business Angels and Early-Stage Investors

ESIL is a Pan-European community aiming to improve angel investment market, stimulate cross border investment opportunities, find new deals, connect the most relevant networks and...

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Smart Specialisation Strategy (S3) for the Italian Region of Trento

a.bassetti — Wed, 08 Mar 2023 13:56:45 +0000

Technical Assistance for the implementation of the Entrepreneurial Discovery Process (EDP) of the Smart Specialisation Strategy (S3) adopted by Autonomous Province of Trento.

The Smart Specialisation Strategy (S3) is the tool adopted by Autonomous Province of Trento to identify objectives or priorities that lead to maximising the effects of research and innovation.

It is an instrument adopted by the European Union and conceived within the reformed cohesion policy of the European Commission, to improve and strengthen the effectiveness of public policies in favour of research and innovation.

The support is provided by Intellera Consulting and META Group.

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Access to Risk Capital/Innovation Policy