As part of the Horizon Europe INDUSAC project, CIT UPC is leading the development and optimisation of new methodology for co-creation based on people-focused short-term challenges. This methodology will be incorporated in a digital platform to generate an innovative mechanism for university-business collaboration that involves students and researchers from European Union Member States and puts them in direct collaboration with professionals in the innovation sector through over 300 challenges developed over three years.
CIT UPC aims to become an international benchmark in the transfer of the excellent technology developed at the UPC in the technology areas that have an impact on the companies and economic growth covered by the project. These are grouped into four main cross-cutting areas: circularity, sustainability, industry 4.0 and digitalisation; and are responsible for contributing to the industry and climate road maps established by the European Union. These major areas have been broadly developed by the CIT UPC through many strategies to boost university-business interaction, including spontaneous processes of co-creation such as hackathons, structured collaboration agreements, collaborative projects and inter-sector mobility projects.
The project emerged from the main area of Science2Society, a successful project with the participation of CIT UPC within the framework of H2020. Science2Society explored methods of university-business-society collaboration and incorporated new participants from widening countries, which the European Commission considers relevant due to their participation in new research and innovation projects.
CIT UPC is participating in the project with two roles, which are intrinsic to its main function of connecting UPC research capabilities with the industry for which the innovation is carried out. Together with its academic partners – the “Jožef Stefan” Institute (JSI), Karlsruher Institut für Technologie (KIT) and the Cyprus University of Technology (CUT), which are leading institutions in their countries and in Europe – CIT UPC will contribute to boosting the talent bank that emerges from the universities by fostering their participation in the research for innovative solutions for European industry. CIT UPC’s mission is to bring this new methodology to the over 25,000 students and almost 3,000 researchers at the UPC to which they have access, to contribute to encouraging talent in the European area and to promote the learning of cross-cutting and entrepreneurial skills among the participants.
In addition, CIT UPC will contribute considerably, in collaboration with industrial partners INNOget, BAX&Company, Bydgoszcz Industrial Cluster Tool Valley (BIC), Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Pécs-Baranya (CCI) and EIT Manufacturing, to strengthening the European industrial ecosystem by reinforcing university-business collaboration through digital innovation applied to processes of co-creation and research of innovative solutions through open, collaborative tools. The direct connection of the CIT UPC with over 500 companies every year and their participation in national and regional clusters and associations (CIAC, Clúster Foodservice, Innovi, Materials Avançats, Audiovisual, In-Move, Clúster IAQ) contributes with a great impact to the consortium’s capacity to attain the objectives of the action. CIT UPC provides an academic and industrial network with great potential, and deep knowledge of the approaches and limitations of the most advanced university-business collaboration methods.