![]()
The European Commission has launched a competition to identify Europe's top future innovators and their innovations. During the entire month of August, people will be able to vote for their favourite among 40 nominees who have been developing digital innovations through EU-funded projects.During the entire month of August, people will be able to vote for their favourite among 40 nominees who have been developing digital innovations through EU-funded projects. They come from every corner of Europe, from SMEs, university teams, spinoffs and start-ups. They have the potential to impact everything from transport logistics to water management to treatment of cancer patients to even the management of bee populations.
These innovators have been identified through the European Commission's Innovation Radar, a data-driven engine that aims to identify high potential innovations and the key innovators behind them in projects that have received investment from the EU's 2007-2013 Research and Innovation funding programme (FP7), the 2007-2013 Competitiveness and Innovation Framework Programme (CIP), and Horizon 2020, the current research and innovation programme.
Since 2014 the European Commission's DG CONNECT has been collecting a broad set of data about EU-funded digital projects. Leveraging a model, developed with the Joint Research Centre's Institute for Prospective Technological Studies, DG CONNECT has been analysing this input to extract insights and intelligence about the best innovations and innovators.
Starting today, the public can vote online for the innovators they think most deserve the Innovation Radar Prize 2016. Voting is open for the entire month of August. Each day, the European Commission will be featuring two of the nominees on the Digital Single Market twitter and Facebook streams.
Nominees are grouped into four categories:
ICT for Society – recognising digital technologies impacting society and citizens
Excellent Science - the cutting-edge of science underpinning tomorrow's digital advances
Industrial & Enabling technologies - the next generation of tech and components supporting the digitisation of industry
Horizon 2020 ICT Innovator - innovative excellence in Horizon 2020's digital research and innovation projects
This public vote will decide on 4 innovators from each category. The 16 finalists will get to pitch their plans for going to market to a jury of experts at the ICT Proposers Day event in Bratislava at 13:00 on 26 September 2016.
The jury will decide on one winner from each category, and an overall winner who will be featured on a euronews programme about their innovation and its market potential.
The first ever Innovation Radar Prize was awarded to BroadBit, during ICT 2015 in Lisbon. Since then, BroadBit, originally from Slovakia, have closed multiple angel investment rounds to finance expansion and production of their innovative battery technology. Learn more about BroadBit in their euronews feature
Innovators across Europe, not just those competing for the Innovation Radar Prize, can seek out support from various EU initiatives that aim to help innovators get their tech 'out of the lab' and into the market. Discover existing services and initiatives offering supports such as: investor readiness training, mentoring, business plan development, legal advice and expanding to new markets."
Europe's research and development programme Horizon 2020, with a budget of nearly €80 billion, has a greatly increased focus on supporting innovation and the EU is investing heavily to support digital innovators. This is part of the Commission's plans to see more and more European inventions delivering benefits for our economy and society, and to help EU –funded innovations get out of the lab and into the market
The European Commission's Innovation Radar initiative
The 40 innovators on the longlist for the "Innovation Radar prize 2016"
Innovation Radar Prize session at ICT Proposers Day 2016
European Commissioner Günther H. Oettinger said "Thousands of EU-funded research and innovation projects with a digital focus have been launched in this decade. Now we are about to reveal which of them are best placed to take their results to the market or have the potential to deliver the biggest impact."
