Called EU-Great - European guide and recommendations for the combined funding of large-scale RDI initiatives, this project is the result of the awareness of an increasing lack of funding and the need for public and private sectors to come together to increase the number of large-scale RDI initiatives in Europe, and consequently increase the commercialisation of new technologies, products and services that make the European manufacturing industry more competitive.

Therefore, the EU-Great will study the conditions for a combined use of funding sources, identifying key aspects that lead to a lack of investment in this kind of initiatives, and provide an overview of the public and private investment sources. These large-scale RDI initiatives, including the implementation of demonstrators and pilot lines, should guarantee the total coverage of the innovation process, from research to the commercialisation of new technologies, in order to maximise their impact. 

The project is led by TECNALIA (Spain), and developed by renowned partners, including INESC TEC, CEA and Platiques RG (both from France), TNO (The Netherlands), VTT (Finland), Catapult (United Kingdom), Wroclawska University (Poland), NANOFutures and Arcelomittal (both from Belgium), and CDTI (Spain).

The INESC TEC team is composed of Luís Carneiro, coordinator of CESE, and Vasco Teles.

The INESC TEC researcher mentioned in this article is associated with the following partner institution: INESC Porto.

INESC TEC, February 2015