€100 million Fast Track to Innovation and 5 innovation prizes announced by the EC

In the context of Horizon 2020, the European Commission presented yesterday the details of a new €100 million “Fast Track to Innovation” (FTI) pilot action and five innovation prizes. The FTI’s objective is to support the European economy by providing innovative businesses and organisations with grants to give a final push to get great ideas to market. The prizes offer a reward for technological breakthroughs of high societal relevance. The initiatives emphasize the drive to support innovation in Europe as part of the first, two-year Horizon 2020 work programme. The Fast Track to Innovation scheme will be open to applications from January 2015. It will support small consortia of three to five organisations with strong business participation to give promising ideas the last push before entering the market. The scheme is open to ideas in any area of technology or application and to any legal entity established in the EU or in a country associated to Horizon 2020.

Further information could be found in the European Commission’s press release.