Open Call: European Partnership on Innovative SMEs/Innowwide

This year, the European Partnership on Innovative SMEs/Innowwide will fund 70 projects.

A market feasibility project includes preliminary technical, market, legal and/or socioeconomic assessments intended to validate the feasibility of your international and innovative business solution (product-, process- or service-market combination) within new and emerging global value chains.

Your market feasibility project must:

• Have a target country (a pilot market) where you intend to develop and validate your innovative business solution in collaboration with local counterparts. You should consider, where appropriate, frugal innovation.
• Have one local partner (e.g., a supplier, customer, end user, research provider or complementary technology developer) in the selected target country, as main subcontractor for the market feasibility project. The expected outcome must have a high impact in the target country (pilot market).
• Feature product- (or process-, or service-) market development.
• Include a variety of activities to identify and assess key local technical and market framework conditions in the target country that may favour or impede the effective deployment of your innovation.

Funding Information

• Each successful market feasibility project will receive a fixed grant of 60,000 euro. The funding to each SME market feasibility project coordinator will be processed as follows:
  • A pre-financing of 70% (42,000 euro) provided at the beginning of project implementation;
  • The remaining 30% (18,000 euro) transferred at the end of the market feasibility project after its obligatory 6 months duration, upon delivery and acceptance of a complete Final Report by the Eureka Innowwide team. If the report is not acceptable, the market feasibility project beneficiaries could be requested to present additional information within one month. Should the information provided still be insufficient, the grant could be reduced or the market feasibility project could be declared as withdrawn and the beneficiaries required to repay the pre-financing.
• The project duration is six months.

Eligibility Criteria

• To apply, you must fulfil nine eligibility criteria:
  • The application is complete. It includes the application form itself, the annex (workplan) in the template provided and all declarations, including your main subcontractor’s commitment.
  • The applicant SME is a legally constituted SME according to EU recommendation 2003/361, in an eligible country participating in Innowwide (EU members states, Iceland, Israel, Norway, Türkiye or the United Kingdom).
  • The project includes an independent subcontractor (local counterpart) in the target country.
  • The project has an exclusive focus on civil applications.
  • None of the participating organisations have convictions for fraudulent behaviour, other financial irregularities or unethical and illegal business practices; is bankrupt or in the process of being declared bankrupt; or is ‘undertaking in difficulty’ according to the EU definition.
  • The project duration is six months.
  • The minimum total eligible project costs is 86,000 euro.
  • The subcontracting cost are above zero euro.
  • The project includes a combination of eligible activities.

For more information, visit European Commission.