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Ateknea participates in the first FTTI call

Today, Ateknea is pleased to announce its participation in the first call of the EU’s Fast Track to Innovation Pilot (FTTI) scheme for disruptive innovation and close-to-market products, services or processes.

The FTTI Pilot is a new initiative under Horizon 2020 – the EU’s biggest ever framework programme for research, development and innovation (R&D&I) – will be trialled throughout 2015/16 and is expected to be rolled out beyond 2016.

The aim of the Pilot is to drastically reduce a technology’s time to market by giving a “last push” to businesses that have a business-driven and market-mature innovation with high commercial potential.

Funding from the Pilot has also been streamlined to ensure a quick time-to-grant (maximum 6 months) of €1 to €3 million per project (70% of funding, 100 of funding for non-profit entities).

The next FTTI call is 1st September 2015. If your product, service or process is looking to get into the fast lane to market launch then Ateknea could be the partner you need to close the innovation cycle, secure an EU non-refundable grant and head onto the market.

For more info on the FTTI Pilot or on Ateknea, write us to contact@ateknea.com or get in contact with one of our Ateknea Offices.

Ateknea continues strong record in 2014

Ateknea Solutions has strengthened its position as a leading European technology centre specialising in engineering and innovation for small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs).

The December 2014 call of the SME Instrument (SME-I) showed positive results for Ateknea´s clients, with a number of Phase 1 and Phase 2 innovation projects successfully funded thanks to Ateknea´s business development services for innovation.

Having surpassed high EU evaluation criteria thanks to Ateknea´s expertise, these newly-funded projects will help our clients to accelerate their growth and propel their innovation to new markets.

With these new statistics from the last Call, Ateknea´s success rate now ranges from 40% to 100. Our main Offices in based in Barcelona, Budapest and Krakow managed to get the majority of funds allocated to SMEs in their respective regions through our tailor-made business development and innovation services.

The figures show a very positive and encouraging set of results for Ateknea and are in contrast to Science Business´s estimations that “90% [of SME-I] projects do not make the grade” with average success rates “ranging 6 to 10%”.

The global results so far for the SME-I show that €30 million euro has been awarded to 655 SMEs across Europe (Phase 1 funding for feasibility studies,). Regarding larger sums of funding (Phase 2 funding for innovation activities and business plans), €225 million has been pumped into 172 European SMEs with outstanding business potential.

Fast forward to the first cut-off for 2015 (March 18) and a total of 2,183 new proposals (1,569 Phase 1 and 614 Phase 2) were submitted to the EU’s executive body in charge of SMEs, the Executive Agency for SMEs (EASME). Results are expected in June.

The SME Instrument is fast becoming the key financial tool for SMEs get their ideas from lab to market and to unlock their business potential. The calls are competitive. According to Business Science, around 90% of proposals are not funded due to a lack of quality.

Ateknea looks forward to helping more innovative SMEs pass the quality thresholds to secure funding in the June 2015 or September 2015 calls. Contact your nearest Ateknea office for more information.

Sources: EASME and Science Business.