Research & Innovation

Innovation is at the heart of all the EIT’s activities. From idea to product and service, from student and researcher to entrepreneur, from lab to the market – the EIT is triggering a change towards a more innovative and entrepreneurial mind-set in Europe.

Innovation Communities (KICs) can link innovation stakeholders in specific environments with others. Individually, Communities have been given a high degree of autonomy to define their internal organisation, composition, agenda and working methods, allowing them to choose the approach and range of activities best suited to their innovation objectives.

EIT funding for projects provides KICs, specifically for "KIC value-added activities", which support the integration of the knowledge triangle in basic and applied research and innovation projects. These funded activities are selected by the Communities through calls addressed mainly to their partners.

The EIT shares a new and innovative vision and good practices that emerge from the Innovation Communities for the benefit of the European Union.

HORIZON2020

Currently, the focus of the EIT is the Horizon2020, the largest research and innovation programme in the EU, with almost 80 billion euros in funds available over 7 years (from 2014 to 2020), in addition to the private investment of partners. This programme promises more breakthroughs, discoveries and global novelties bringing great ideas from the laboratory to the market.

The aim of the research-innovation nexus, which occurs with Horizon 2020, is to ensure that Europe produces world-class science, to remove barriers to innovation and to facilitate public-private partnerships.