Attica Scale Up Project: “NKUA - Inventor of the year” 

The Regional Development Fund of Attica will implement its Scale Up Action Plan with the cooperation of Archimedes Center and the National Kapodistrian University of Athens capitalising the exchange of experience phase of the Scale Up project. This Plan is endorsed by the Scale Up Attica Regional Stakeholders’ Group and the ICAR director as the relevant policy responsible organisation on behalf the Managing Authority of Attica ROP 2014-2020.

The action - project called ’NKUA - Inventor of the year’ aims at:

  • Promoting technology transfer among researchers
  • Accelerating the process from lab to market
  • Creating entrepreneurial awareness

It is inspired by the MoWin Innovation Lab and is adapted to the Greek entrepreneurship culture and innovation ecosystem. Finally, it can also be directly connected to the selected policy instrument.

The action plan will be implemented based mostly on the experience of the Archimedes Center (the organisation responsible for implementation). Archimedes is the Center of Research Innovation and Entrepreneurship of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens.

The vision of Archimedes is to serve society regarding technology and knowledge. Archimedes Center is aiming at the development of an ecosystem through which human resources and other resources of the University will interconnect to human and other resources outside University to promote development and dissemination of knowledge and research. The Archimedes Center consists of two complementary offices: the technology transfer office and the business accelerator.

The idea behind the Action Plan is to connect the research community to industry by guiding the best ideas of the research community from the lab to the market. The aim is to develop research-based products/services that will be incubated in existing or new companies (spin-off). The link between this Action and the Good Practice MoWiN is the full adoption of the German methodology model, consisting of the 3 main steps to award the best R&D ideas.

Steps – phases for the implementation of the Action Plan are:

  • 1st Phase: Preparation of a call for applications
  • 2nd Phase: Submission of Entries and Evaluation
  • 3rd Phase: Preparation for the Final Test
  • 4th Phase: Final Evaluation and Nomination of Winners

It will be monitored by a responsible monitoring team and funded by the available budget of RDFA for the Innovation Center of Attica (ICAR) actions by the Attica Regional Operation Program 2014-2020.

ICARs’ goal is to improve competitiveness, exchange know-how support to innovation, and enhance extroversion through strategic synergies. In cooperation with the regional innovation ecosystem and related production, transport and exploitation of productive knowledge and innovation, ICAR aims at fostering synergies and developing complementarity between businesses and institutions.