Smart4Europe2 Summary

In recent years innovation in products and services is to an increasing extent based on digitisation. Prominent examples are consumer products like smart phones, autonomous driving, Industry 4.0 etc. Digitisation enables enhanced or new functionalities in most products and services. A key question is “How to optimise the transformation of this potential?” Especially SMEs need an easy access to digitisation technologies.

This was the starting point of the initiative “Smart Anything Everywhere” (SAE Initiative, smartanythingeverywhere.eu) of the European Commission.

The background of the SAE initiative and several “Success Stories” are described in the brochure “Smart Anything Everywhere” issued by the European Commission. To download the brochure click on picture.

The concept of the Coordination and Support Action “Smart4Europe2” is to serve the SAE Initiative at three levels:

  • the Commission
  • the projects aligned to the SAE Initiative and
  • all parties interested in the SAE Initiative, with a focus on SMEs and mid-caps.

The ultimate goals of Smart4Europe2 are to provide support in:

  • reinforcing the collaboration between projects supported under the SAE Initiative
  • increasing their outreach and impact
  • providing wide coverage of stakeholders in technological, application, innovation, and geographic terms.

In order to achieve this, Smart4Europe2 will expand the existing website to create an Innovation Portal, provide a service centre; facilitate brokerage; coordinate communication and dissemination activities; help in sharing best practices and experiences; create a Technology Radar to identify technologies SAE can benefit from; and last but not least, establish links to regional/national initiatives to leverage investments and stimulate growth.

Under the SAE umbrella there will be a growing number of projects, focusing on different technology domains and positions in the innovation cycle – Smart4Europe2 will include all of them, bringing together the community, helping it to grow organically and catalysing digitisation throughout Europe.

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No. 872111.