Horizon Europe framework grant agreement for SIN

Horizon Europe Framework Grant Agreement for SIN aims to strengthen the organization's competencies within the Horizon Europe R&I program from the European Commission, as well as increase participation and success in Digital Europe, COSME, and other EU programs. The Ministry of Education's EU strategy for Horizon Europe (H2020) has ambitions to achieve 2.5 percent of the competitive funds to Norway, compared to 2.2 percent achieved in H2020, and 1.7 percent in FP7. This requires an increase in the participation level in these programs for all the Norwegian entities including Smart Innovation Norway also. SIN has been very successful in working together with top European researchers and already in the year 2020, SIN has been successful in 5 H2020 proposals. However, an updated strategy and increased effort is needed to take SIN's ambitions to higher level, scale up the efforts, and generate even more spill over effect for the Norwegian research and industry. Therefore, this proposed project lists activities that shall be conducted to achieve the targeted KPIs in the year 2021 & 2022. The result of this project will be increased competitiveness, and visibility for SIN as being a top research organization within its focus areas, as well as being the influencers and leaders to promote Norwegian interests at the international arena within the specified domain.

BACKGROUND The Ministry of Education's EU strategy for Horizon Europe (H2020) has ambitions to achieve 2.5 percent of the competitive funds to Norway, compared to 2.2 percent achieved in H2020, and 1.7 percent in FP7. This requires an increase in the participation level of just over 70% compared to the 7th Framework Program (FP7). Smart Innovation Norway's board approved SIN's strategy in 2021 which is equally ambitious in numbers and gathered SIN's ambitions in four main areas i.e. Sustainable Energy Systems and Markets, Applied AI, Smart Cities, and Digital Entrepreneurship. SIN's leadership is ambitious in their efforts to significantly increase external funding, and has focused on it to increase and improve the support of researchers who have the opportunity to obtain more external funding. SIN has been very successful in working together with top European researchers and already in the year 2020, SIN has been successful in 5 H2020 proposals. However, an updated strategy is needed to take SIN's ambitions to higher level, scale up the efforts, and generate even more spill over effect for the Norwegian research and industry. Therefore, the proposed project lists the renewed ambitions, and targeted actions points for SIN regarding Horizon Europe in the year 2021 & 2021. OUR VISION – OUR DREAM: Our ambition is to strengthen our participation in Horizon Europe and other research and innovation programs from the European Commission and be competitive, visible, influencers, and an attractive partner for top European research groups. Our detailed action points are provided in the project description but some of the notable points are: -Horizon Europe on Leadership Agenda -Competency Development -Impact Creation from H2020 & Horizon Europe Project Results -Network Building Activities -Utilizing External Expertise -Exploiting Existing Resources -Establishing Processes and Routines -Long Term brand & image