CERIS-SSRI virtual workshop: Uptake stories: 3 avenues from R&I to deployment

4 June 2021 from 9:15 to 13:00

Under the frame of the Community of European Research and Innovation for Security (CERIS), DG HOME is organising a new set of conferences addressing matters that are cross-cutting to the R&I activity in the different security domains. This set of conferences under the Thematic Group “Strengthened Security Research and Innovation”, look with particular interest into the challenges of innovation uptake.

While EU-funded security research has largely demonstrated its impact in terms of value creation and knowledge generation, some questions require more insight.

For example, do the technologies and the knowledge developed in EU-funded security research projects reach the wider market? It is likely that beneficiaries of EU funds retain the knowledge achieved with their participation in projects and embed it in their daily activities and portfolios. However, there is insufficient hard-evidence on how this knowledge is transferred from the research arena to the market arena.

It is also uncertain how the technologies developed in EU-funded security research projects are adopted, acquired and deployed by EU security authorities. There are success stories brought by testimonies of authorities who have actually incurred in a strong R&I effort and later capitalised on it by promoting further development, integration or testing activities, or by acquiring the technologies that were developed in collaboration with industry. However, again, how and how often this happens is not sufficiently known.

The transition of innovative technologies from the laboratory to the field of operations is indeed a challenge. To understand this challenge we also need to understand that innovation uptake is not a single-step process that happens only at the end of a research project and is automatically enabled by a successful research result. Innovation uptake shall be contemplated as a long process that is conditioned, among other issues, by a number of enabling actions carried out by different stakeholders before research is even planned and long after it is completed.

In view of the upcoming adoption of the first security R&I work programme under Horizon Europe Cluster 3, a serious reflection about pathways to uptake is needed in order to maximise the impact of the Union’s investment in this domain.

The scope of this webinar was to:

• Present three avenues for the uptake of research results
• Illustrate each avenue with real-life and inspirational examples
• Propose recommendations for stimulating uptake of innovation following the described models.

The workshop took place on 4 June 2021 from 9:15 to 13:00 Brussels time.