Happy anniversary to EWGIC! One year has passed since the first informal meeting of 15 consultants during the EU R&I Days 2019, launching what has now become the European Working Group of Innovation Consultants.
One year of EWGIC… and many achievements!
On 24th September 2019, 15 European Innovation Consultants, including Euronovia, met in parallel of the 1st edition of the R&I Days in Brussels. Their common concern: the recognition of professional EU project management in the forthcoming Horizon Europe programme. The European Working Group of Innovation Consultants – aka EWGIC – was born!
Despite a turbulent year due to the COVID-19 crisis, EWGIC has fulfilled several achievements, such as:
- The publication of the Manifesto to support professional project management, which gathered over 160 signatures;
- The EWGIC’s Code of Conduct which promotes best practices, impartiality and basic competition rules among European consultants,
- 3 position papers on the EIC Accelerator and the role of innovation in the recovery process.
After one year, 41 consulting compagnies and organisations from 18 European countries are now members of EWGIC. At Euronovia, we are proud to be part of this initiative since the very beginning!
Under the radar: the EIC Accelerator
The rest of 2020 as well 2021 will be a busy period for EWGIC with the final adoption and launch of Horizon Europe. Among the various components of the programme, the modifications foreseen for the EIC Accelerator gathers serious concerns.
This highly competitive funding scheme for deeptech startups is now victim to its popularity with success rates falling below 1%, thus leading to an important share of “Luck factor” in the evaluation of proposals. To tackle this issue, the EIC task force has proposed a radically new evaluation process with a pre-screening stage, a regular written stage and an interview stage, leading to a “go / no go” approach instead of scoring.
Even though EWGIC believes the suggested changes will support a more transparent and fair evaluation, the organisation has published a Position paper proposing 15 possible improvement areas. Read the position paper here!
Not yet you an EWGIC member? Join us!