Info and training materials

Pilot Action (PA) Vouchers for Developed Solutions of the Research Project

To support the fight against the Covid-19 pandemic in Central Europe SYNERGY project decided to speed up the pilot action on Vouchers for Developed Solutions of the Research Project.

Crowd innovation will be used as a revolutionary process for research and innovation projects’ development to help in the fight against COVID-19. Vouchers will be granted to the best research plans that will be presented.

Platform users will upload a problem related to the Key Project Areas (KPAs) to be solved on the Synergic Crowd Innovation Platform (SCIP) and other platform users will solve the selected problems and present their results. The topics of the challenges and solutions presented in this speeded up pilot action in the months of April and May must be related to the COVID-19 pandemic.  More information about the procedure can be found here.

Target Groups

Challenge giver could be a company (LE & SMEs & start-ups), university, public entity, health services or a research institute/group involved in the Covid-19 emergency. The platform offers challenge givers the opportunity to present their research idea and needs and to look for solutions, specific competences and partners for collaboration.

Solution provider could be a research team, fablab, company (LE&SMEs) or a researcher with technical expertise. The solution provider contributes with his/her competences to achieve a project’s goal and joins a research team.

Voucher Awarding

The SYNERGY team selects the 5 best solutions and awards the winners with a voucher to the value of up to 3.000 EUR each. There will be two different rounds of evaluation and voucher awarding.

Vouchers will be allocated to solution providers and must be used specifically for paying services useful to reach the challenge’s objective.

Priority in the voucher awarding of this PA is given to the challenges and respective solutions that address the topic of Covid-19 emergency. Vouchers must be spent on a purpose related to the COVID-19.

The allocation of vouchers is managed according to the state aid and de minimis rule. You can find further info at this link: State aid and the de minimis rules in terms of vouchers assignment procedure.

Evaluation procedure and criteria

The pilot action evaluation and selection procedure for the voucher granting will be conducted by an expert commission, a jury, appointed by the partner responsible for the specific pilot action, CRIT. The jury will be formed by two members of the SYNERGY team, to be decided within the Consortium, and 1 KPA specialist. The jury selects the most promising solutions based on criteria in table 1 based on a scale 1[min] – 5[max]. In case of tie, additional impact should be considered (environment, social, etc.).

Criteria that will be taken into account

Criteria that will be taken into account for the evaluation include:

1.    Requirements: the jury will evaluate the correspondence of the proposed solution with the challenge, the compliance with the IPR requirements possibly asked by the challenge giver and the technical feasibility of the idea (max. 15 points);

2.    Level of technological innovation and implementation of the idea: the innovation potential of the idea, the economic impact of the proposed solution for the final beneficiary (challenge provider), references/capability/traceability of the solution provider and the implementation of a teamwork (including cooperation with the challenge provider) to reach the solution (max. 20 points);

3.    Cost/Benefit analysis: evaluation of all the potential costs and revenues of the proposed solution (max. 5 points);

Table 1 Evaluation Criteria PA Vouchers for developed solutions of the research project

List of services

The rules mentioned in the section “voucher awarding” apply to the use of the service vouchers.

Below, there’s the list of services that could be demanded by the “winners” of a challenge. Services will be selected by the winner by filling in an Application for service module. After delivering this module, CRIT and PROFACTOR will contact the service provider and put into contact the service provider with the winner. After the delivery of services, the service providers will send CRIT or PROFACTOR the invoice and the winner will send an email to confirm the reception of the service.

Some examples for services that may be used are (Vouchers must be spent on a purpose related to the COVID-19):

• patent analysis, 
• research ordering, 
• training, 
• infrastructure sharing ,
• measurements/tests/field services, 
• (IPR) consultancy, 
• consultancy on how to write a project/on funding opportunity, 
• business support services, 
• consultancy on branding, 
• supply of materials (consumables), 
• research project publications/ proof-reading/translations, 
• conference fees, 
• other (specify), ………………………