European IP Helpdesk Ambassador Summer Summit 2024: Knowledge Valorisation Practices from Widening and Non-Widening Countries

On June 17-18, the European IP Helpdesk collaborated with the University of Split, a member of the Croatian Enterprise Europe Network (EEN) consortium, to host a two-day training summit for European IP Helpdesk Ambassadors. The event focused on various aspects of knowledge valorisation, including industry-academia collaboration, intellectual asset management in different institutions and ecosystems, and practical support and case studies showing how IP Ambassadors assist start-ups, scale-ups, and beneficiaries of various European Innovation Council funding programs.

The event commenced with a welcome from the European IP Helpdesk Ambassador Coordination team, Claire Fritz and Ivana Vuka, followed by updates on recent project activities and the strategic priorities of the European IP Helpdesk for the new contractual period, such as a stronger focus on Widening countries. Additionally, five new Ambassadors were officially welcomed to the team: Neven Tamarut (Croatia), Stéphane Taliana (France), Siobhan Horan (Ireland), Anna Sangiorgi (Italy), İzlem Şahinkaya (Turkiye).

The program then delved into practical aspects of knowledge valorisation, highlighting the shift from traditional technology transfer concepts to managing intellectual assets and creating social value from knowledge. The subsequent session focused on industry-academia collaboration, with a keynote by Smiljka Vikić-Topić, Senior IP & Innovation Advisor at the European IP Helpdesk. She discussed various aspects of managing industry-academia co-creation for effective knowledge valorisation, offering practical advice on finding suitable industrial partners, managing agreements between industry and academia, and sharing her extensive experience working in an EU-13 institution.

The first day concluded with a FAQs session from the European IP Helpdesk Helpline, addressing common questions related to academia-industry collaboration, particularly within the context of EU-funded projects.

The second day began with an interactive group work session focusing on the practical implementation of the Code of Practice on the management of intellectual assets for knowledge valorisation. Following this, IP Ambassadors presented their practical examples. The session then shifted to start-up and scale-up support, with Igor Bošnjaković from the Croatian State Intellectual Property Office and Head of the local PATLIB node discussing the support offered by PATLIBs. Idil Buse Kok Hazer, the IP Ambassador from Türkiye, followed with an insightful case study on ODTU Teknokent venture capital funds for deep-tech startups. The 2^nd day was concluded by Kostas Vavekis and Emilie Marcelet sharing their insights about the EEN2EIC project, an initiative that aims to extend the breadth of supporting activities EEN can provide to women entrepreneurs, widening countries and Seal of Excellence (SoE) holders. The goal is to create a bridge between the two projects in order to support innovation, scale up companies and involve the most relevant actors in the EIC and EEN landscape.

The IP Ambassador Summer Summit 2024 facilitated a rich exchange of ideas and best practices, fostering stronger collaboration and enhanced knowledge valorisation across Europe, with a special emphasis on supporting and integrating Widening countries into the broader European innovation ecosystem.

The next Winter Summit for the IP Ambassadors is scheduled to take place in Brussels in December.