Support and stimulation of dynamic and organic growth of pan European ICT for Manufacturing SME Innovation Ecosystems

Research Project, 2015 – 2018

The ICT Innovation for Manufacturing SMEs (I4MS) initiative was launched by the EC on July 2013 with an initial budget of 77 million Euro. During its first stage, I4MS has shown substantial success and contributed to the progressive development of European SMEs adopting advanced ICT solutions for manufacturing.
The initiative has already achieved some of the main goals resulting from the interaction with SMEs through the successful launch of open calls that generated a high participation of SMEs, many of them newcomers to EU R&D funding programs.
The actual stage of the projects involved in I4MS brings the need for enhanced support and specific actions towards their exploitation success and towards better leveraging the European Manufacturing Sector through the implementation of ICT solutions within the Manufacturing SMEs. Four additional projects have joined the initiative, these projects will need to integrate in the initiative and have same services of support as the projects included in the first phase of I4MS, such as open calls support, etc…

For this purpose, I4MS-Growth has designed different strategies that will among others:

• Renew the I4MS Portal with improved areas for providing information of interest to: regional entities, competence centers, SMEs, etc…
• Enable the interchange of synergies between IPs and IAs involved in the initiative
• Support the interaction with the I4MS Competence Centre Network
• Continue to promote and support the involvement of SMEs in the new launch of open calls for IAs
• Reinforce the brand and image of the Competence Centers Network of Excellence as well as their interaction with innovation hubs
• Facilitate the dissemination of the experiments for a future replication and implementation of the I4MS scheme within the regions
• Position the I4MS initiative as one of the key initiatives in Europe for the Manufacturing and ICT sector
• Administrative management of innovation hubs