Are you a visionary SME that needs expert skills that are not available or affordable in your own country? Then this call might be interesting for you.

Acquire expertise from abroad

With the SME Innovation Associate programme, SMEs can employ a highly-skilled experienced postdoc researcher (the ‘innovation associate’) for a continuous period of one year. The innovation associate’s tasks are to explore the potential of their innovative idea and turn it into an innovation project. This call thus enables SMEs, that often do not have the means or the available network to acquire talent from abroad, to recruit specialized knowledge on a European level.

What does the European grant programme fund?

The following aspects are eligible within the SME Innovation Associate grant programme:

• Employment of an innovation associate (Postdoc) for one year.
• Participation of the innovation associate in a core training programme on industrial innovation and business management.
• Financial support for the SME to implement a training and development plan specifically for the associate.

Interested in applying?

The deadline for this call is January 17, 2019. In case you would like to apply for this call, please note the following. Proposals are evaluated based on:

• Demonstrated benefits of recruiting transnationally i.e. the impact for the SME to get access to skills not available on the national labour market;
• The excellence and impact of the innovative idea,
• The coherence and effectiveness of the recruitment plan which should offer the same opportunities for male/female candidates.

Furthermore, the following criteria will have to be met by the Innovation Associate:

• The candidate must be a PhD holder;
• The expertise of the candidate must be in line with the job requirements as outlined in the vacancy notice;
• It is required that the candidate has not lived or worked in the country where the SME is based for more than twelve months in the last three years.

Source: www.ec.europa.eu/easme/en/h2020-sme-innovation-associate

About Hezelburcht | extensive experience

Our team consists of ambitious and entrepreneurial consultants with high-quality backgrounds and provides grant advice specific for both fundamental scientific research and commercial R&D. Our consultants speak the clients’ language and their backgrounds match the clients’ sectors. Their scientific backgrounds range from High Tech Systems and Materials, Biomedical Engineering, Chemistry, Health and Nutrition, to eHealth and Neuroscience.

Should you have any questions, or need support by applying, please feel free to contact our specialists for more information.

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