The Grant

Somehow Norwegians seem to like to be on The Grant… I have a good handful of recordings in the box now with organisations from our dear associated friends in the North. There is a great R&D and innovation environment in Norway, so I am very happy to be able to share that with you all.

This week I am zooming in on the area of regional representation in Brussels. Brussels is filled with regional representations from all over Europe that is both working with general policy and concrete project facilitation for stakeholders from the home region.

I have myself been working in such an office and, hence, of course wants to share how they work. To put meat on that bone I invited long-time Director of the West Norway Office, Merete Mikkelsen, into the virtual podcast studio for a talk about the motivation and function of the office.

In the episode we cover how they keep a strong connection to the stakeholders in the home region, we have a talk about their lobbying and influencing efforts and of course we look into the project facilitation.

Excellent content to understand how regional representations in Brussels they work.

Time codes:

00:06:12 Fly in

00:14:35 Functions of the office and organisation

00:39:40 The connection home

00:58:21 Lobby

01:10:38 Project facilitation

01:24:02 The toughest challenge

It is time to harvest the fruits of lots of sowing. Research organisations are quite difficult to get on board the podcast and I have managed a few since I started, but now I am finally having a handful of research organisations already recorded or lined up for recordings.

This week I have Senior Researcher Antonio M. Ortiz from the Norwegian private research organisation NORCE in the virtual podcast studio. Not only is Antonio researcher with more than 15 years of experience – he has also worked as research project manager in two different ICT companies. And on top of that he also used to be my colleague as private grants consultants in PNO. In other words - he has tons of experience from many sides of the table when it comes to EU funding and ICT which is his domain.

I invited him in to have a talk about his work in NORCE as a researcher in the research group for artificial intelligence. We talk about the research strategy of NORCE and then we allow ourselves to be a little geeky and dig into the actual research they do and also taking time to fold out a funded project on smart manufacturing using artificial intelligence to make a more safe, sustainable and efficient production.

This is gold for researchers and research managers. You don’t want to miss this.

Time codes:

00:11:29 Introduction to DARWIN Research Group

00:17:56 Funding strategy

00:36:14 Key research tracks

01:04:31 Concrete project presentation

01:15:16 The toughest challenge

Europe is at war. Not just since February 2022, but actually since 2014 when Russia invaded Crimea. That incident triggered a reaction in the former European Commission under President Juncker. It was decided to establish a defense fund to strengthen European defence industry and military capacities. We all know what happened later on and as such establishing the fund is almost prophetical.

Calls are up this autumn for the funding scheme and hence I considered it a good idea to record an authoritative The Grant introduction to the funding scheme to help everybody that is working with proposals for these calls at this moment.

I invited expert on the programme Margherita Volpe, R&I Consultant - Security & Space Knowledge Area Leader at Zabala Innovation Consulting, into the virtual podcast studio to take us all through the programme.

The episode is divided into two. In the first part from last week we covered the political and strategic background of the funding scheme and the structure of the programme

In this second part we dig into target group stakeholders, how to apply, the evaluation regime, what happens when funding is received and finally do’s and don’t’s.

Time codes:

00:02:00 Target group stakeholders

00:07:24 How to apply

00:34:08 Evaluation

00:45:14 Do's and don't's

00:47:12 The toughest challenge

Europe is at war. Not just since February 2022, but actually since 2014 when Russia invaded Crimea. That incident triggered a reaction in the former European Commission under President Juncker. It was decided to establish a defense fund to strengthen European defence industry and military capacities. We all know what happened later on and as such establishing the fund is almost prophetical.

Calls are up this autumn for the funding scheme and hence I considered it a good idea to record an authoritative The Grant introduction to the funding scheme to help everybody that is working with proposals for these calls at this moment.

I invited expert on the programme Margherita Volpe, R&I Consultant - Security & Space Knowledge Area Leader at Zabala Innovation Consulting, into the virtual podcast studio to take us all through the programme. The episode is divided into two. In the first part we cover the political and strategic background of the funding scheme and the structure of the programme including types of funding, the content categories, typical project activities and call round frequency.

Time codes:

00:12:22: European Commission priorities and strategies on EDF

00:23:41: Structure of the funding programme

Brussels has a lot of university liaison offices representing universities from all over Europe. They do a tremendous work – I have seen it with my own eyes.

Some universities decide to gather into a collaboration around their Brussels activities. I have an old contact that is representing exactly such an initiative in Brussels. Simona Costa is Head of Office of the university collaboration Tour4EU. It is a collaboration of seven Tuscan universities where they have decided to join forces with a spearhead office in Brussels.

Of course I needed to invite in Simona for a talk about how that works. Seven universities are a big mouthful to represent so we discuss of course how they have organized their approach.

It became a long talk, so this one is a two-episode release. Last week we talked about the background for the collaboration, dug into the key functions of the office and how they are organized and finally we had a talk about the issue related to thedistance between the liaison office and the region back home in Italy.

In this second half we zoom in on the way Simona is structuring the lobbying activities for the seven universities in Tour4EU and then we have a talk about how she secures access to proposals and projects for the Tuscan research communities she supports.

Great content for research support professionals and Brussels-representatives. 

Time codes:

00:02:25 Lobbying

00:26:10 Project facilitation

00:41:00 The toughest challenge

Brussels has a lot of university liaison offices representing universities from all over Europe. They do a tremendous work – I have seen it with my own eyes.

Some universities decide to gather into a collaboration around their Brussels activities. I have an old contact that is representing exactly such an initiative in Brussels. Simona Costa is Head of Office of the university collaboration Tour4EU. It is a collaboration of seven Tuscan universities where they have decided to join forces with a spearhead office in Brussels.

Of course I needed to invite in Simona for a talk about how that works. Seven universities are a big mouthful to represent so we discuss of course how they have organized their approach.

It became a long talk, so this one is a two-episode release. In this first part we talk about the background for the collaboration, we dig into the key functions of the office and how they are organized and finally we have a talk about the issue of distance between the liaison office and the region back home in Italy.

A really strong episode.

Time codes:

00:06:32 Fly in

00:14:55 Functions and organisation

00:22:19 The connection home

Large energy companies are very popular in the EU funding eco-system. If you manage to get one of these babies onboard your EU energy proposal then you know that you have just made your chance bigger to access funding. Even better if it is from one of the continents big capitals!

I happen to be so lucky that The Grant has a regular listener from exactly such an organisation. Amy Radlberger is EU Funding Expert in Wiener Stadtwerke which is the energy company of Vienna.

I reached out to invite her in for a talk about how they work with EU funding and luckily for me she happily accepted the invitation.

So, we recorded a strong episode with focus on the key innovation areas for such a large organisation, a talk about their innovation strategy and how they calibrate that vis-à-vis EU funding. This is a very strong episode with insights into how the energy company of one of the largest cities in Europe work with EU funding. A real treat for you out there.

Time codes:

00:13:57 Key areas of innovation for Wiener Stadtwerke

00:21:00 Innovation strategy

00:40:00 EU funding as a tool

01:13:20 The toughest challenge

I am very proud to present to you all a new episode concept in this podcast: The Grant Q&A.

The concept is as simple as it is hopefully informative:

Through this concept other beneficiaries throughout Europe approaching the same funding scheme can get enlightened on issues that they have already stumbled into or will eventually stumble into.

I will slowly add episodes to The Grant Q&A as I move on. There are no limitations to the questions so please reach out if you would like to be involved.

Christina Achilleos, owner and founder of the grants consultancy company InnoEUsphere, is an Erasmus+ expert with 45 successful Erasmus+ proposals under her belt. She is the right one for Stelios to ask those questions he has!

Please enjoy as we dig into components of the proposal, evaluation criteria, how to keep the proposal on track and so on. Lots and lots of great guidance content for anyone sitting right now and preparing a proposal for this Septembers call round in Erasmus.

Time codes for the seven questions:

00:26:20 What are the specific components that need to be included in an Erasmus+ project proposal?

00:33:36 How does the evaluation process work for Erasmus+ project proposals?

00:41:43 What are some best practices for developing a successful Erasmus+ project proposal?

00:50:45 What are some common challenges that trainers face during the implementation phase of an Erasmus+ project?

01:01:50 How can you ensure that your project stays on track and meets its goals and objectives?

01:06:23 How can you address any unexpected issues or roadblocks that arise during the implementation phase?

01:12:19 What are some effective strategies for monitoring and evaluating the progress and impact of an Erasmus+ project

The complexity of the overwhelmingly large EU funding system is massive. In spite of standardization measures over the years and efforts to make funding more accessible from the EU Commission, the system has grown so big that it has proven almost impossible to make a make it simpler to apply for funding. It seems when one big measure from the EU Commission to simplify and standardize has been implemented, another bureaucratic or practical issue grows larger and makes the overall experience from the beneficiaries more or less the same – complex and challenging to approach.

The issues are manyfold: Rules for application, budget rules, submission systems, the lingo, the problems of identifying the right funding box, the unspoken rules that you need to know and of course the often absolute necessity for paying an external consultant in order to deal with all this.

This is a big topic to chew down – even in a long podcast format like The Grant. Maxence Viallon, Grant Finance Officer at EIT Urban Mobility, has an opinion about this subject and makes an effort through his blog ‘EU funds – Simply explained’ to grow awareness within the EU Commission and among the beneficiaries.

I invited him in for a talk about this fundamental issue of the whole EU funding system and it ended up being a great conversation about shared frustrations, the big challenges within the system and what the EU Commission is actually doing to minimize the effects of the complexity.