Innovation financing

The innovation financing department provides support in seeking regional, national and european grants to support investments in innovation projects, new technologies development and start ups.
Thanks to a consolidated European network, the department can help in identifying partners to build successful consortia to access opportunities provided by EU programmes. Moreover, it can help companies in carrying on project management, dissemination and exploitation activities linked to the project implementation.

 Our activities

To each client we propose an integrated strategy in order to benefit from different grants, by creating a funding matrix, depending on the innovation project. Our “Taylor made” approach is enabled by a deep knowledge of the client company through the NExT Innovation Model (link alla pagina web in inglese!). This allows us to understand the innovation project and frame it in the available calls.

Thanks to our integrated approach, we build lasting relationships with companies, for which we became a point of reference for the innovation financing. Trust is of uttermost importance in this field, considering that the effort in project financing is quite high, and activity in tandem with the client is a key factor to guarantee successful results.

 Calls for Proposal

The Innovation Financing department monitors calls for proposals from the Chambers of Commerce, Lombardy Region, the Italian Ministry of Economic Development and the European Union.

We can support companies – that have innovative ideas suitable for grants – in the proposal writing for local, national and European calls, always taking into account the overall company strategy.

• LOCAL AND NATIONAL GRANTS
  These grants can be vouchers or calls of proposal that provide the company straight grants from 10.000 euro to 150.000 euro, depending on the investment range.
• EUROPEAN GRANTS
  Our team monitors the framework programmes for research and innovation, such as Horizon 2020 and the new EIC Pilot, Horizon Europe, and LIFE for environment, COSME for SMEs competeitivity, Erasmus+ for education. These kinds of calls are very competitive and the innovation level required is higher with respect to local and national calls; at the same time straight grants are higher, with a range from 150.000 euro to millions of euro.

 Project Management

The Innovation Financing department can help in the project management as a subcontractor or as a project partner with specific activities (mainly in European calls). The activities we can carry out in projects are about innovation and project management, dissemination and exploitation activities.

• Innovation management: valorization of the skills available in ComoNExT within the technology transfer, incubation and start up acceleration, education activities.
• Administrative management: such activities belong to the Project Management activities. They include the general organization of project activities through GANTT charts; the internal communication in case of a consortium; the expense reporting and the interaction with the financing institution.
• Dissemination: these activities are very important in European calls because they aim at providing information about the project to a vast public through website, social media, brochures, but also through trade fairs and conferences participation.
• Exploitation: these activities are the ones related to the development of the innovation output after the project. They may include business modelling, business planning, IPR management, communication and marketing strategies, and financial sustainability.

 Events

The Innovation Financing department organizes events for information and networking about available grants and about relevant technologies at the international level. These events are open to companies – not only to the ones installed in ComoNExT, and to local stakeholders, depending on the chosen topic.

 Our added value

The added value of the Innovation Financing department is being part of the NExT Innovation model and being transversal to the innovation hub services: the incubation department and the education one. This allows us to help companies, startups, schools and universities with an integrated approach, and to promote ComoNExT as a partner in international consortiums.

We can count on the multiplier effect provided by our network, thanks to consolidated collaborations in the project financing with: Enterprise Europe Network, APRE, UNI, Confindustria Lombardia, Confindustria Bruxelles, Confindustria Como, Invitalia, LE2C cluster. We can also benefit from the relationships established by ComoNExT’s other departments

 European projects