​Marco has been with META Group since July 2019. He is a senior consultant with more than 15 years of experience in innovation services, exploitation of research and development (R&D) results, entrepreneurship strategies, and state aids and funding for young entrepreneurs. He has a background in International Relations from the University of Padua and Business Administration from the University of Bath. He is very passionate about military history and also a film buff, which is something we take advantage of when we need recommendations for good movies. 

​Lorenzo Barabani is one of the META Group members who has been with the company almost from its inception. He joined the team in 2007 after a first experience in the marketing department of a local company in Terni. Lorenzo is a particular type of engineer: a managerial engineer who holds a multidisciplinary academic background ranging from economy to business management and maths. He’s fluent in English, Italian and Hungarian. In the office, everybody knows him as a reliable colleague always ready to joke around and work hard. 

In this article, we invite you to get to know Anita Tregner-Mlinaric, one of META Group’s experts, as we discuss industry trends and her work as an innovation expert. Anita is a Senior Advisor and has been with the company for over 10 years. She has extensive professional experience across multiple sectors and the professional experience gained in the international environment (UNDP, OSCE, U.S. Embassy, USAID, META Group, European Commission).

Anita is originally from Croatia and is known within the team as a light-hearted, friendly, and supportive colleague. She is also a fitness addict who loves to dance and travel.

What does your professional journey look like, Anita? What led you to this profession and eventually to META Group?

Initially, I was supposed to venture into the tourism sector as this was supposed to be my professional vocation. Nonetheless, life took me in a different direction. After the war in Croatia, numerous international organizations started to appear in the region. I spent more than ten years working for several international organisations in Croatia and the rest of the Western Balkans. To some extent, our efforts were geared towards preparing Croatia for EU membership. We implemented various programs aimed at enhancing the country’s economic development and competitiveness. Among others, these programs included initiatives to uplift the SME sector and their skills through tailored-made certified training programs.

These experiences not only broadened my network but also allowed me to keep in touch with the institutions and stakeholders I previously worked with, which I am still exploring to identify opportunities for collaboration with META Group. This was a phenomenal journey, filled with diverse projects that allowed me to adapt swiftly to various sectors and programs. My professional role was always related to close collaboration with directors as their “right hand” to ensure the successful implementation of the programmes.

What is your area of expertise and current responsibilities?

From the moment I arrived, I took responsibility of overseeing the implementation of various EU-funded programs that META Group was spearheading. Working alongside Andrea di Anselmo, who, like me, has extensive experience in policy development, we focused on initiatives that were primarily policy related. These were horizontal activities that built capacity across a wide range of fields and that were mostly related to cohesion policy and smart specialization.

We also focused on the capacity building of the newer member states to absorb EU funds in a more strategic manner, empowering them to build their own organizational capabilities and become more successful in utilizing these funds and programmes. While our other projects shared a similar scope, they mainly focused on smart specialization or investment initiatives, all of which were aligned with our mission to empower organizations and individuals to achieve their full potential.

How have innovation policies changed or evolved since the time you entered this sector?

Well, it’s been quite a journey. While some states have always been important players in the innovation space, we have seen some amazing progress in certain countries. EU 13 countries that were previously considered less developed, like Slovenia, Poland, Czech Republic, Baltic countries, have really stepped up their game and made impressive strides in their innovation policies.

Of course, there are still some areas that need improvement, but the good news is that EU is taking notice and actively working to address these issues. We’re seeing a shift away from solely relying on structural funds and towards a focus on direct funds, which is a promising development. But there is still much work to be done, and sharing best practices between countries is a key part of achieving success. Ultimately, our goal is to bridge the gap between newer and older member states and create a more unified and innovative Europe.

At the moment, which projects are you currently involved in?

For the past two years, I was assigned as a senior expert and advisor to DG Regional Policy, focusing mainly on cohesion policy. My job has been to advise European regions that have been mobilised and engaged through S3 Partnerships under Thematic Smart Specialisation Platforms (TSSPs) of the European Commission on how to shape their investment projects and steer them towards a strategic approach to progress towards (and depending on) their maturity stage. It’s been a challenging and yet rewarding experience since many of the S3 Partnerships that I have supported have reached the set milestones and needless to say that I’ve learned so much along the way. I was supported along this journey with another expert, Cecilia Gañán de Molina, who was my “partner in crime” that became my close friend due to the intense work and time we have spent together.

This experience has also enabled me to specialize in new instruments and become one of a few consultants with knowledge and experience on the subject, such as ERDF Interregional Innovation Investments (I3) Instrument so I delivered a lot of presentations to inform the regions on this topic.

On the other hand, this also gave us the opportunity to participate in a consortia applying for this type of instrument. We are proud to have been awarded with the I3 project, named DEREMCO, which commenced at the beginning of this year and was among the first group of 11 projects being funded under this instrument

Which are the most challenging aspects of your role?

Finding the right partners to participate in projects may be challenging and it is a crucial aspect not only of receiving funding but also of effectively managing and implementing a project.

What is it like to work as a project manager

Very often you find yourself in a leadership position. What is it like in this field?

One of META Group’s key strengths is our collaborative approach to problem-solving. By working together as a team, we are able to quickly identify and address any issues that arise. It’s important to be proactive in this regard, as timely action can prevent minor challenges from escalating into major problems.

As project managers, we recognize that every project will encounter some level of difficulty or risk. However, our success depends on how effectively we respond to these challenges. By promptly communicating with our colleagues and management, we are able to devise solutions that minimize the impact on the project, its beneficiaries, clients, and stakeholders. Ultimately, this proactive approach helps us ensure that the project stays on track and meets its objectives.

Which is the part that you enjoy the most in your job?

Working with META Group has been an incredible learning experience for me, and I doubt that I would have become an expert of the European Commission if I didn’t have the chance to acquire all this knowledge and experience through the company. I am grateful for the open communication that allows me to seek guidance from my supervisors when needed. Moreover, I am encouraged to take on new challenges and to promote both myself and the company in the process.

As a senior adviser to the European Commission, I have gained valuable experience in evaluating EU-funded projects and providing project reviews. It is gratifying to know that my expertise has been recognized by these institutions, and that I am trusted to make important decisions regarding project funding. It helps to better understand certain processes or policies or to get closer to the policy makers, which in the end is also a pretty big achievement for the company itself. Overall, my time at META Group has enabled me to grow professionally, and I am grateful for the opportunities that have been presented to me.

In general, how would you say that META Group helps clients and beneficiaries?

When it comes to clients and beneficiaries, I believe that sometimes being a smaller a medium-size company is a strength, because we can provide tailored services and solutions. We also pay a lot of attention to the quality of the delivery. This acts as a powerful reference so often our partners, clients or beneficiaries return.

Moreover, there is a sort of family feeling within the company that seems to be reflected outside, because we are highly motivated by our work, we appreciate the company and the people we work with, and this gets translated in the way we deliver our services.

For me, this kind of mentorship that I was given by my management and my colleagues is priceless. This helps you to grow professionally and it is something so rare to find in a work environment. I appreciate it a lot. I have been with META Group for over ten years, a testament to the company’s exceptional culture and family-like atmosphere.

What are the trends that you see in your sector right now?

The consultancy sector is constantly growing. But I think companies in this field are faced with a talent retention problem. They are not able to keep skilled people because bigger companies tend to put more pressure on employees. This is impacting the fluctuation of people. There are also cases in which the quality of the service delivery is not always the best due to high work volume and lack of agility. We see that the organisations we work with appreciate our company’s approach.

Could you share with us a nice META memory?

I would mention the way that the company has always been there for me, very receptive in personal issues that I dealt with at times. My mother was very sick fighting with cancer, and I had to go from Brussels, where I have been living, to Croatia and work from there for months while also taking care of her. There was always a lot of understanding for my personal situation, providing support without any prompting.

This kind of professional and private life balance that META Group helps a lot with being motivated and doing your best to be on top of the job. Also, the interaction with colleagues and management. When we have an opportunity to be together and socialize, we always have an amazing time, lots of laughing, while on the other hand, when we work, we are very professional and efficient. It’s a winning combination that makes for an enjoyable and productive work environment.

You might also like

• Antonello Fiorucci: We are moving from a solution-led to a problem-led approach
• Andrea di Anselmo on Horizon Europe projects: new knowledge and benefits for citizens

Antonello Fiorucci is one of them. Antonello has 13 years of experience in project management and is involved in multiple research and innovation initiatives that META Group partners with. He has a background in International Relations with a master’s degree in Diplomatic Studies. Outside work, he loves playing tennis and spending time with his dog, Vito.

What is your role and your main responsibilities?

I have different responsibilities: in a nutshell, I am one of the Horizon Results Booster experts, I work on proposal writing and I manage the research result exploitation and dissemination activities in two European research projects: ECO2FUEL and HYscale. Also, I have been delivering a lot of trainings in the past year, which is something I enjoy. My daily work is very interesting, and I manage to do different things.

In both ECO2FUEL and HYscale, META Group is responsible for the exploitation of research results. We support innovators in identifying and using the results of their work. It may be developing a completely new way of producing green fuels, like in ECO2FUEL and HYscale, or a completely different field of research. Our objective is to design the research result exploitation process and to secure the use, and impact, of research results developed during the project.

What is the most challenging part of your job in this area?

Understanding which results from research are the most promising, how to use them, and how to transfer them to the market to generate impact presents the most challenging part. On the other hand, working together with the scientific staff and transmitting the importance of using what they are working on is also a challenge. Once they understand why it is important to focus on results and their use, everyone is more engaged with the most important part of the process, which is to generate a positive change for the economy, society, environment. If we can show them the reason why we are doing what we’re working on, things get better.

Do you have any example of how to identify the most promising results? Any good practice?

At META Group, we have developed a process that starts with the validation of what we call Key Exploitable Results (KER). We apply our methodology to characterise each result and design the business plan for each KER. Our team has refined this methodology based on years of experience working with numerous research and innovation consortia. We can count on this proven process to ensure that the research organisations we work with will bring innovation from lab to market and solve critical challenges facing our society.

How can META Group address its clients’ challenges and support them?

META Group is uniquely positioned to help research organisations and public institutions accelerate the lab-to-market journey and the valorisation of knowledge to solve global challenges. The approach in research has changed in the last few years. The emphasis is now problem-led rather than curiosity-driven. META Group partners with a variety of stakeholders – entrepreneurs, incubators, universities, research centres, SMEs, government and European institutions to reinforce this new approach and enable transformative, knowledge-enabled change. Several research actors started to understand the value of this approach, which is increasingly becoming a prerequisite for publicly funded research. It is a matter of methodology and approach that we have been successfully using and which are consistent with the European Commission’s vision and values.

Is there any aspect of our work that is perhaps not well understood right away by clients or partners?

The concept of “impact” has increasingly gained importance in the last EU research framework programmes. Traditionally, it has not been part of the core business of our partners and clients. Our role is to provide support in this regard. Researchers bring a lot of value in scientific excellence. We have to be ready to bring ours in impact generation. We must make sure that our partners understand the efficient use and exploitation of research results.

The use of novel products and solutions is something that innovators must think about and build upon from the moment they start this journey, and we help them to do just that.

Could you share a beautiful memory related to META Group?

I have lots of good memories. Some of them really funny, like the gourmet dinners with the President, Andrea Di Anselmo, when we are far away from our wives’ eyes, and we can eat everything we want without feeling guilty. One of the dearests is the first time that I talked with Alessia, who is now the CEO of the company, in 2010. She called me after reading my CV.  We had a warm conversation, which in a way said a lot about the company culture and the team I was about to join. META Group means BEYOND: it is a place where we go and think “beyond” every day. I learnt it since the very begining. It is something still clear in my mind and that ignites my motivation and my expectations every day.

For years, Europe has been dedicating huge resources to scientific and technological research with the aim of supporting innovation and improving the lives of its citizens. Nonetheless, the results produced by research often do not translate into concrete benefits for the economy and society. To improve the return on these investments, with Horizon 2020 and even more with Horizon Europe, the focus shifted to ensuring that scientific excellence generates a tangible and recognizable change in a target group, a concrete impact. This shift requires a new paradigm, an approach that goes beyond the “European project” dimension and leads to the effective use of research results. The workshop by META Group based on 30 years of experience in valorising the results of European projects, attracted a lot of interest among the participants of the 2022 APRE Conference.

At the end of the meeting, Andrea Di Anselmo, President of META Group, gave an interview for the APRE Magazine that you can read below.

In your experience, what is the data that emerges from reading Evaluation Summary Reports (ESR), in particular considering EIC‘s Transition and Accelerator schemes?

There is a clear challenge for research teams to consider impact as a decisive element of the project and not an accessory aspect, secondary to the excellence of scientific advancement. Compared to tools such as the European Innovation Council’s Transition and Accelerator and also the European Research Council’s Proof of Concept projects, this is more and more evident. There is little confidence, and perhaps even little interest, in looking beyond research funding and focusing on what needs to be done so that excellent results are used, reach more adoption, and generate impact. These are tools that do not finance the development of new knowledge but activities to bring findings and new knowledge to the market or to transfer them to third parties.

Should the importance of impact in project evaluation also be reflected in the budget allocation between various activities?

The Anglo-Saxons saying “put your money where your mouth is” seems to me the the correct way to proceed. If an activity is considered important, this should be reflected in the allocation of resources.

We were talking about the EIC Transition: it is evident that by emphasizing the transition from research to market, the balance of activities, and consequently, of the budget, must address the “business / use oriented” objective. The same happens in collaborative projects and other types of funding schemes. The importance of this dimension is evident if we consider the weight that the impact section has in the evaluation phase of Horizon Europe and the attention dedicated to this topic in the proposal template. Furthermore, think about the formalization of concepts such as “outcome,” which denote a “factual” interest in impact. In this context, researchers should keep in mind that Horizon projects are required not only to develop new knowledge but to enable benefits for European citizens.

In your presentation, you insisted a lot on performance indicators and use. Is there an impact without using research results?

There are many discussions about “how to measure impact,” but very little attention to having results used as a first step towards generating impact.

At META Group, we say that “there is no impact without use” and that it is difficult to measure something that does not exist. Our focus is to help clarify how key exploitable results will be used by a specific target group. It is the use, in the long term, that enables impact. Having said that, the performance indicators in Horizon Europe are much simpler to select and make credible, thanks to the introduction of the concept of “outcome,” which concretely crystallizes the moment adopters start using a Key Exploitable Result, before or after the end of the project. Therefore, this immediacy allows us to define verifiable and effective indicators for the outcomes and to project them on the impact that will be enabled in the long run.

Of course, we are very interested in connecting with those who have made an impact with a result kept closed in their drawer.

Dissemination, exploitation, impact, are three different actions, are there still unclear points and room for improvement when dealing with them?

We come into contact with many projects. There is rarely a complete understanding from all partners of what needs to be activated to mobilize impact. Exploitation, Dissemination, and Communication are three different actions, each with a different set of activities to perform and with different target groups. We see many cases in which we talk about dissemination starting from the first months of the project’s life. From our point of view, it is strange that a specific target group can be informed about the opportunity offered by using a result, when this result does not yet exist and is not well defined or, better said, “characterized.”

The good news is that the European Commission is perfectly aware of these challenges and it is for this reason that it has created a program providing free services for all projects funded in Horizon Europe, H2020 and FP7. The program is called Horizon Results Booster and supports the implementation of Exploitation, Dissemination, and Communication activities to maximize impact and generate benefits for European citizens.

The Horizon Results Booster free services can be requested at www.horizonresultsbooster.eu. We suggest that all funded partnerships apply to benefit from the methodologies and tools provided by the team of experts that deliver these support services.

Especially in the academic environment and in research centers, there are excellent groups with well-trained and competent colleagues in the technology transfer and third mission offices, ingredients that give us the opportunity and the possibility to do better.

Interview originally published in the APRE Magazine

META in partnership with Italian Angels for Growth and the Emilia-Romagna Region about 85% of the share capital of Biogenera. They signed yesterday a framework agreement with Life Care Capital, that will lead, by the end of July, to the merger by incorporation of LCC into Biogenera. For the purposes of the merger, Biogenera was assigned an equity value of 70 million euros and LCC an equity value of approximately 139 million euros.

Biogenera is a biotech company specialised in the research and development of DNA biotechnological drugs. They main objective is the treatment of serious paediatric and adult pathologies. Biogenera born from a patent of the founding members Andrea Pession and Roberto Tonelli and from the careful due diligence and investment of META Ventures with IAG and the Emilia-Romagna Region.

12 years have passed since Roberto Tonelli and Andrea Pession received the first investment that allowed them to undertake this path. “I met Roberto when only a few but promising results from in vitro experimentation were available. The quality and purpose of the research and the motivations of Roberto and Andrea prompted us to believe immediately in the project, to set up the company looking for other investors who could together with META Ventures bring resources into Biogenera,” says Francesca Natali, Director of Biogenera and META Ventures.

From knowledge to the market

“It was tiring at the beginning also emotionally: we met the associations of the parents of the children with neuroblastoma. However, in recent years we have been convinced that an effective alternative therapy for the treatment of rare paediatric tumours could be brought to the market,” concludes Francesca Natali.

“Biogenera was the first major investment made between META Ventures and IAG. As President of META Ventures and co-founder of IAG, this was a moment of particular significance for me. 26 of the 28 business angels of which IAG was then composed enthusiastically accepted my invitation and that of Roberto Tonelli, investing almost half a million euros, a record figure for the angel investing in Italy at the time,” declares Luigi Amati.

In other words, “For META, this is the confirmation that seeking excellence in Italian and European Universities and Research Centres. This is a path that we have started to pioneer since 1993. We can generate results of great value. There is still a lot to do. Our hope is that Biogenera can, with its example, change the speed and effectiveness of the dialogue between stakeholders. We expect it to be conducive to have many other stories like this soon – from Knowledge to Market!”

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