Moving the World with Swiss Innovations: Funding Opportunities for National Innovation Projects

Transcript

fantastic yes all right fantastic uh what a wonderful uh start to the morning um we have another great session here for you with Cil from uh inos Swiss if you ever wondered what it takes kind of to Swiss innovate and to be a part of this ecos system I think this is definitely the keynote to listen to so s I'll let you uh take it away welcome thanks a lot moving the world with Swiss innovation good morning everyone and great to see you here at the crypto Valley Conference my name is Cil asbach I work at the inos office and I'm responsible for Innovation projects in the field of

ICT with my presentation I would like to provide you an overview firstly in general and also about inos and secondly I will present some supporting instruments which might be interesting for you to you but before I do this I would like to ask who already knows inos wow that's great so I really hope that I can tell you something new we also have time for Q&A at the end of the presentation so that would be fine if you have questions please ask me Switzerland is ranked number one in

the glob Global Innovation index 2023 why is Ino 3 so Innovative well we have some of the world's best universities and we also invest a lot in R&D in 2021 we've been invested almost 25 billion in r in R&D the majority of this came from private investors from the private

sector Confederation and cantons fund about 6 billion part of this was financed by inos SS inos is the national Agency for promoting science-based Innovation to the benefit of the Swiss society and economy but what does that mean inos swis offers quite a lot of funding instruments more than 20 instruments so it is not that easy to find the right instruments for your needs we have

grouped our offers into three categories and highlighted them them in colors first support we give is in the domain of innovation projects it is on the content level on the slides it is highlighted in blue and also on our website this should help you to find the instrument you need more easily then we offer different instruments of networking and expanding knowledge this is highlighted in yellow and finally there is a lot of supporting in creating

startups it is on a management level and this is highlighted in Red so last year inos approved funding contribution of about 500 million Swiss ranks around 13 million was for supporting startups around 20 million ion was for networking and expanding knowledge and the majority around 460 million was for supporting Innovation projects the the outcome of this funding is to generate economic and social

value to create jobs to enable risky innovations that would otherwise not have been realized and also to accelerate knowledge and Technology transfer from research to the industry now let me jump to the second part of my presentation which funding offers could be interesting for you today I will present three instruments The Innovation check the standard Innovation project and the startup Innovation project project The Innovation checks and also the standard Innovation

projects are a Consortium of research partners and Industry Partners as already mentioned the the aim is to promote science-based Innovation but what does that mean exactly this means that the in The Innovation will be done by two different partners on one hand the research partner such as Industries or uh universities and universities of applied sciences and on the other hand the implementation partner mostly companies this means that the Innovation

will be developed on the research site and implemented on the business side The Innovation check gives you an easy access to the world of science-based innovation funding it is for smmes or other companies with less than 250 full-time employees it is a vure to get Research Services up to 15,000 Franks from a research partner usually I present the inos as the little brother or little sister from a standard Innovation project it does not need intensive preliminary

work it aims to test your idea before you apply for a standard Innovation project and it is meant to test your idea to check the feasibility of an innovation concept or to develop it further also to analyze the Innovation itself or the market for the innovation for the Innovative process product service or technology it is also meant to test the collaboration between the partners last year we received more than 900 applications for Innovation checks the approval rate approval rate for this

funding instrument is quite High almost 70% were approved for the standard Innovation project projects the threshold is quite higher there fundamental preliminary preliminary work must be done before applying for a uh for a project as mentioned before it is a collaboration between research partners and implementation Partners the aim is to jointly develop an innovation and implemented on the market inos SS covers the costs from the research partner and the implementation partner brings its own contribution of 40 to

60% mostly uh with collaboration within the project so what are the advantages for an implementation partner in this setup so they gain access to science so to Scientific knoow and research and development resar resources and how do researchers benefit from this setup well they get experience and also the customer perspective there is no limit to the duration of such a project normally it lasts between six and 36 months there is

also no limit in regards to the costs but of course inos has a limited budget last year we have assessed more than 800 project applications around 370 were approved that means the approval rate here is around 45% I can imagine that when you submit your application you would like to immediately start with your Innovation project but we need a few weeks for doing the decision about the application so however I would say we are quite fast once you have submitted your

application the evaluation process starts for standard Innovation projects we have eight decision meetings per year you can see the dates on our website so what happens to your application during this time within the first two weeks it will be formally checked and if everything is in order we will send it for standard Innovation projects to two independent experts as soon as the assessments are available a ranking list is drawn up and at the decision meetings The Innovation Council decides which application will be funded and which will be

rejected the communication will be made within the following two weeks that means if your project application will be rejected you will receive a letter with the reasons for rejection and if it is approved you will receive the contract within two weeks and as soon as we have received the signed contract back you can start with your Innovation project I would like briefly to mention the assessment criteria as I explained earlier your application will be assessed by two independent experts but what is the basis for this

assessment mainly it's three criteria the first is the Innovation degree so it's the scientific and economic approach novel and what makes your Innovation unique second Criterion is the sustainability and value Creation in Switzerland that means is there a positive added value and do you does your product or service have a unique selling proposition and thirdly it is about the project setup itself quality of the methodology and also the experience of

the project partners for examples do you also have Golds and Milestones described in a a quantitative way and do the partners have the expertise needed to carry out the project and implement it on the market it is important to be aware of this Criterion and to explicitly address it in the application the third funding offer I would like to present you today is the startup innovation project here the process is quite

similar that I explained earlier about the standard Innovation projects but we need to receive your application at least eight weeks before the decision meetings the assessment criteria are also the same however there is an additional Criterion with the startup Innovation project it is the financial viability of the startup because it is a direct financial support of the startup these Innovations are also science-based and application science research oriented let's say it like this but also science-based absolutely this is

necessary and the intent of this funding instrument is to prepare the startup for its first Market entry in this setup inos covers up to 70% of the total project costs and the startup beers a minimum of 30% as its own contribution as mentioned before the evaluation criteria are the same than for standard Innovation projects but here it is also important for us because inos fund startups directly to really prove if the startup is able to bring in

this at least 30% during the duration of the project this duration is limited of a maximum of 36 months and it is a highly competitive funding instrument we have four decision meetings per year and for this year we are expecting an approval rate of about 10% one supported startup in the blockchain area is onoy it is a decentralized physical infrastructure project and the project is about enabling M adoption using High

Precision positioning using blockchain technology if you would like to hear more about the project or the team's experience with inos please ask Daniel Amon he's also attending at the pitch meetings this afternoon and will present onoy yes moving the world with Swiss innovation now you are more familiar with the startup Innovation projects with the inos and also with the standard Innovation projects a possible research partner for the inos and standard Innovation projects is the lern University of applied sciences and

arts so I'm very happy to present Tim bner who will introduce you to this Research Institute thank thank you Cil for the for the great presentation and uh also to um yeah show our uh our people here from the conference what they can do together with in Swiss and we thought well we uh also want to give you an an Insight how this would look from the University perspective and then also have Q&A so my name is Tim M I'm here from hos lern and um yeah we're in midst of the crypto Valley uh doing research in the crypto Valley since yeah

2016 here and um our team uh some of you you already met um we beside organizing this conference uh we are also uh doing research and also lecturing uh blockchain technology and DLT here uh in R gos um you see there there are open spaces so we're hiring uh if you're interested come to me and um I just want to show you some of the projects we we did also to give you impression what uh what kind of projects uh these are and um uh and also what what possible research projects you

can do so one uh one of the inner SS projects we did we did a couple of projects but I picked some of those who are blockchain related one is a profilia um which focuses on on privacy and customer education using uh blockchain technology another project uh which also has finished quartier stro which uh is a P2P energy trading also and I highlighted this um it's a Consortium um project so it's one of those projects were several industry partners and also several universities together with eth uh participated in this project um as aill mentioned those projects are

normally around two years um there are other um other possibilities like the Ino booster which is also supported by inos Swiss um there are several topics uh for those Ino boosters uh we just finished one um project on web 3 for sports there also will be in a presentation tomorrow afternoon um which um digs into self- Sovereign identity and Sport and there are other research possibilities um more on the academic field uh bridge is one of those um which is more or less uh funded by Swiss national uh Science Foundation together

with in awiss this is Bridge meaning bringing fundamental research to obled research where we have one actual project together with the University of syc and seta a uh focusing on regulatory reporting and finally there are other research possibilities outside also Switzerland um like the European Union uh so uh we as a blockchain lab we participated at the first EU blockchain Observatory and forum and also there are a lot of um so-called um in in Switzerland which support more smaller projects so that's to give you an

overview of um of where we are and I think now we're open for q& day anybody a question take the microphone [Music] thank you so uh we're based in lonstein and uh the local University there do you happen since lonstein is very much integrated to Switzerland in many ways is there a customary but collaboration between the Swiss universties universities and lickstein and the private companies that you can think of

and would we be eligible for uh for for looking for any of the um funding uh that you've been through yes for the standard Innovation projects yeah Switzerland and lonstein has an agreement and inos does the evaluations and make a proposition for the office in lonstein um of approving or rejecting uh a project and lonstein decides by its own but mostly based on the recommendation of the Innovation Council yes but we do have an agreement yeah yeah thanks for the questions I mean if you have questions in the course of the

day I mean we we are around um don't hesitate yes please the standard Innovation project for the startups the The Innovation check it was The Innovation check and the standard Innovation project in this

setup this is a very good question I mean in this setup inos covers the cost of the research partner and if you are a company from Asia you have to bring in your own contribution yeah and um normally it is eligible if you have or if the project has at least one Swiss implementation partner also integrated in this in this project setup then it is possible to have uh an implementation partner also from abroad but at least one partner from Switz must be also part of the of the project setup it is yeah this is a good question

so it is a little yeah it's a little bit internal term agree so as a research partner we usually mean uh for example a university or a university of applied science Sciences as research partner and the implementation partner is a partner from the industry such asme in this setup also NOS or nonprofit organizations and it's not limited to uh employees all um even the huge companies are allowed to submit project applications yeah the average the average amount of this kind of project standard Innovation

project is around 400,000 yeah it's a really good question um I'm as mentioned before I'm responsible for projects in the ICT area and blockchain is one of our clusters so we have not that many uh support or received applications in the last few years I guess it's at the moment around 10 to 15 uh ongoing projects and overall at the moment we have about 1, 1,200 ongoing standard Innovation projects and for the

startup Innovation projects is about 40 because this instrument was launched last year for the first time SCI scient this is a very good question um the goal is for inos to really have this this research designs based but also have the implementation on the market

so this that's why it must be based on on science let's say it like this you have to describe the actual state of the art but then you have to have an implementation partner and and a use case a value creation for the economy or for the society so that's why it is really applied research to focus on it must be based on research and you have to describe it on the within the application what is it based Bas on what what is the extent with your project in regards to the state-ofthe-art and who will benefit and what is the benefit out of it yeah yeah great yeah Research Institute I can use

the mic just the research institute is that something that is assigned based on the needs of the company that is described in the application or is it something where you would get assistance with finding the right Research Institute to work with up front front we also offer um supporting for finding the right Partners uh yeah for finding the right partners for your needs for your uh or the need of the company that it fits best yes okay thanks a lot okay so otherwise if you have more question during the day as mentioned before please uh come to us and ask we are happy to answer your questions thanks a lot