DigiFed launches second Open Call for companies across Europe to digitalise their products and services
DigiFed offers grants of up to € 55k as well as technical and business support to start-ups, SMEs or Mid-Caps for the development of smart applications in Europe.
The EU funded project “Digital Innovation Hubs Federation For Large Scale adoption of digital technologies by European SMEs“ opens today its second call for applications.
Operating within the framework of the Smart Anything Everywhere Initiative, DigiFed seeks to boost the adoption of advanced digital technologies, or cyber-physical systems (CPS), by EU SMEs with a focus on non-digital businesses.
It will help applicants implement business plans for the sustainability of the federation of Digital Innovation Hubs designated by the European Commission, while providing key support mechanisms for both individual companies and groups of SMEs to foster the introduction of digital technologies in their product-and-service offerings.
The second open call is divided in two main strands:
Open call for Application Experiments
Application Experiments (AEs) are the core activity of DigiFed. This pathway directly supports SMEs and Midcaps with different levels of digital maturity:
- For SMEs with low digital maturity it offers the capacity for SMEs to catch up and upgrade their skills and existing products with dedicated services, tools and solutions.
- For SMEs with higher digital maturity it offers further innovative technology integration as well as access to potential customers including larger industrial stakeholders.
Application Experiments have been proven to be successful by several projects especially in I4MS and SAE initiatives (on which DigiFed is built). DigiFed will continue such successful practices and amplify their potential by also supporting direct collaboration between SMEs.
Open call for the Digital Challenges
The Digital Challenge is a match funding opportunity where advanced digital technology SMEs are selected through an open call to solve industry challenges set by corporate businesses.
The purpose of the Digital Challenge is to highlight attractive market needs to be addressed through CPS and embedded systems and for which new solutions are required.
DigiFed is working with large European organisations, the Digital Challenge Owners, who will serve as early adopters of the accelerated innovations and provide additional support to the programme in the form of co-funding, access to innovation support and pilot sites.
Deadline to apply by is 15th December 2020! Visit the Open Calls section on the Digifed website for more information!
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No. 872088.